A.P. Moller-Maersk unexpectedly lost money last year as Denmark’s biggest company wrote down the value of some of the energy assets it plans to split off.
Maersk shares fell as much as 7.4 percent as the Copenhagen-based conglomerate reported a net loss last year of US$1.94 billion.
Analysts had expected a US$963 million profit. The company, which has only reported two annual losses since World War II, wrote down US$2.7 million in its Maersk Drilling and Maersk Supply Service units.
Maersk said the firm’s chairman Michael Pram Rasmussen is to step down after almost 18 years on the board.
He is be replaced by Jim Hagemann Snabe, who is also the chairman of Siemens.
Snabe, together with the firm’s chief executive officer Soren Skou, is to oversee Maersk’s plans to separate out its four energy units, which also include its North Sea petroleum producer, Maersk Oil, as the company focuses on its transport operations.
Maersk shares declined 5.3 percent to 11,020 kroner as of 9:07am yesterday in Copenhagen. The stock has now lost 2.8 percent this year, valuing the company at 224 billion kroner (US$32.13 billion).
Maersk last reported a net annual loss in 2009, when a global financial crisis crippled trade.
Meanwhile, the company’s container line is set to do better this year. Maersk Line’s underlying result would be more than US$1 billion above the US$384 million loss it booked last year, it said.
Maersk expects global container market growth of 2 to 4 percent this year.
The forecast comes amid a consolidation wave, with the global shipping industry struggling for the better part of a decade to adapt to excess capacity and sluggish trade growth.
Maersk Line won market share last year as its transported 9.4 percent more containers amid demand growth of 2 to 3 percent, the company said.
Freight rates fell on average 19 percent last year, Maersk Line said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six