REAL ESTATE
Parking space sets record
Hong Kong just set another property-price record. This time, it was for a parking space. A 17.5m2 space on Hong Kong island sold for HK$5.18 million (US$664,300) last month, Ming Pao reported yesterday, citing land registration records. The parking space cost more than some homes: Centaline Property Agency Ltd (中原地產) data showed a HK$4.2 million sale of a 26.5m2, two-bedroom home in Sha Tin, in the New Territories, in April. The parking space is at the residential building Upton, which was also the site of the previous record parking-space transaction, the newspaper said.
CHINA
Economy losing momentum
Factory output and retail sales grew at a steady pace last month, but investment slowed, reinforcing views that the world’s second-largest economy would soon start to lose some momentum as lending costs rise and the property market cools. Factory output rose 6.5 percent last month from a year earlier, National Bureau of Statistics data showed yesterday. Retail sales were more upbeat, rising 10.7 percent last month from a year earlier, but fixed-asset investment growth slowed to 8.6 percent in the first five months of the year, data showed. Growth of private investment slowed slightly to 6.8 percent in the first five months from 6.9 percent in the first four months, the bureau said.
MEDIA
Time Inc cutting 300 jobs
Magazine publisher Time Inc said it is cutting 300 jobs as it struggles to adjust to readers’ shift online. The New York company behind its namesake publication, People, Sports Illustrated and Fortune said about half the jobs eliminated are in the US. About 60 percent are layoffs, the rest are staff buyouts. The cuts amount to about 4 percent of the company’s staff as of the end of December last year. Time Inc chief executive Rich Battista on Tuesday said in a note to employees that the company’s key growth areas include video and “native” advertising that looks like editorial content. He says there are “positive signs of stabilizing” in the print business.
MINING
Fosun in Gemfields bid
Fosun International Ltd (復星國際) joined the race for Faberge owner, Gemfields PLC , after it made an initial proposal regarding a possible cash offer for the British precious stones miner. Fosun Gold, part of Fosun International, said it has proposed to buy Gemfields at a price of £0.4085 per share, a premium of 15.1 percent to Gemfield’s closing price of £0.355 on Tuesday. The proposal values Gemfields — which mines for emeralds and amethysts in Zambia, and for ruby and corundum in Mozambique — at £224.6 million (US$287.13 million).
MEDIA
Ten appoints administrators
A major Australian television network, Ten Network Holdings Ltd, has appointed voluntary administrators as it struggles with debt and shrinking advertising revenue. Ten’s board decided to appoint the three administrators yesterday after two of the network’s billionaire backers, Lachlan Murdoch and Bruce Gordon, advised last weekend that they were not prepared to guarantee a new A$250 million (US$189 million) bank loan when a A$200 million loan is due to expire in December. The administrators are to decide whether Australia’s third-most popular commercial television network can continue trading or should be shut down.
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