JAPAN
Household spending rises
Household spending rose in June after 15 months of declines, official data showed yesterday. Household spending rose 2.3 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, widely beating market expectations for a rise of 0.5 percent. A separate report from the ministry showed that nationwide inflation edged up 0.4 percent year-on-year last month, after stripping out the volatile costs of fresh food, while the jobless rate sank to the lowest level in more than 20 years at 2.8 percent last month from 3.1 percent in May, with the ratio of job offers to job seekers remaining at four-decade highs.
FRANCE
Economy expands 0.5%
The economy expanded by 0.5 percent in the second quarter of the year, despite a slowdown in growth in business investment, the Insee national statistics agency said yesterday. An increase in the growth of consumer consumption from 0.1 percent in the first quarter to 0.3 percent, helped compensate for a slowdown in the increase in business investment from 1.4 percent to 0.5 percent, the agency said. Exports also helped to boost growth, jumping by 3.1 percent, it said.
SPAIN
Economic recovery continues
The economy accelerated at the fastest pace in almost two years, extending a recovery that shows no signs of abating. Output grew 0.9 percent in the three months through last month after expanding 0.8 percent in the previous quarter, the National Statistics Office said in a preliminary report yesterday. That was the best reading since 2015 and matched the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The economy accelerated 3.1 percent from a year earlier.
ELECTRONICS
Intel profit doubles
Intel Corp more than doubled its second-quarter profit as sales of its PC chips improved and the company made further inroads in promising new areas of technology. Intel earned US$2.81 billion, or US$0.58 per share during the three-month period ended July 1. That compared with net income of US$1.33 billion, or US$0.27 per share, at the same time last year. Revenue rose 9 percent from last year to US$14.76 billion, above the average analyst estimate of US$14.41 billion, according to Zacks.
BANKING
UBS posts higher profit
UBS AG yesterday posted higher profit for the second quarter as improved investor confidence led to growth in its wealth management units. Net profit for the period was up 14 percent at 1.17 billion Swiss francs (US$1.21 billion), the Swiss banking giant said. Operating income came in as forecast at SF7.2 billion. UBS said it is on track to reach its cost-savings target of SF2.1 billion by the end of this year.
AUTOMAKERS
Nissan-Renault leads sales
The alliance of Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co and Renault SA of France said it led in global vehicle sales for the first half of this year, the first time it has claimed top rank. The Nissan-Renault alliance sold 5,268,079 vehicles around the world in the January to June period. That was more than Volkswagen AG at 5,155,600. Toyota Motor Corp yesterday said it sold 5,129,000 vehicles in the first half, while General Motors Co was in fourth place, selling about 4.7 million vehicles in the period.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts