ELECTRONICS
Samsung profits up
Samsung Electronics Co yesterday said that its first-quarter profit surged nearly 50 percent thanks to the record-high income from its semiconductor division. The South Korean company said earnings jumped 46 percent over a year earlier to 7.7 trillion won (US$6.8 billion), with sales rising 2 percent over a year earlier. Operating profit surged 48 percent to 9.9 trillion won, it said.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Bayer raises forecast
German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer AG yesterday raised its forecast for this year after netting a big boost to profit on the back of higher sales in the first quarter. Sales at the group grew 11.7 percent to 13.2 billion euros (US$14.4 billion), while profit added 38 percent to reach almost 2.1 billion euros — both outstripping analyst forecasts. Operating, or underlying, profit grew 34.3 percent to 3.1 billion euros. The group increased its forecast for the full year, upping revenue projections to 51 billion euros and predicting growth of about 10 percent in operating profit.
TELECOMS
Nokia reports another loss
Nokia Oyj yesterday said that it remained deep in the red at the start of the year, with sales in its main business, networks, on the decline. The Finnish firm reported a first-quarter net loss of 473 million euros, a slight improvement from the 623 million euro loss recorded the previous year. The network business, which makes up for more than 90 percent of the firm’s sales, fell 6 percent year-on-year to 4.9 billion euros, while the technologies division, which makes up about 5 percent of sales, saw sales rise 25 percent mainly as a result of higher patent and brand licensing income. Overall, Nokia sales fell slightly in the quarter to 5.4 billion euros from 5.5 billion euros the previous year.
ELECTRONICS
Nintendo’s Switch sells well
Nintendo Co yesterday said that its new Switch, a hybrid game machine that works as a console and a tablet, is selling well, helping it trim its quarterly losses. The Kyoto-based company said it has sold 2.74 million Switch machines and 5.46 million units of Switch software since sales began last month. The company’s January to March loss was ¥394 million (US$3.5 million), improved from ¥24 billion a year earlier. Quarterly sales jumped to nearly ¥178 billion from ¥79 billion. Nintendo expects to sell another 10 million Switch machines in the fiscal year that ends in March next year.
AVIATION
Airbus’ Q1 profit halved
Airbus SE profit more than halved in the first quarter, falling short of analyst estimates as production glitches held back deliveries of the European planemaker’s newest jets. Adjusted earnings before interest and tax fell to 240 million euros from 498 million euros a year earlier, Airbus said yesterday. The value of new orders also slumped almost 50 percent, with the Toulouse, France-based company announcing contracts for just six new planes compared with 10 in the same period last year. However, net profit was up to 608 million euros from 399 million in the same three-month period last year, mainly to the sale of its German-based Defense Electronics firm to investment company KKR in February, which generated 560 million euros. Chief executive officer Tom Enders said the company stood by its forecast for a mid-single-digit percentage gain in annual earnings, together with more than 700 commercial aircraft deliveries.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by