CHINA
Firms maintain profit surge
The country’s industrial firms maintained a profit surge, underscoring the economy’s resilience even amid slowing factory output and investment. Industrial profits last month increased 16.5 percent from a year earlier, versus the 19.1 percent pace a month earlier, the nation’s statistics bureau said yesterday. The robust earnings might not be sustainable though, as slowing producer inflation and rising real interest rates might squeeze factories and mills in the coming months.
SOUTH AFRICA
Few bid for rhino horns
A rhino breeder who held what he called the world’s first legal online auction of rhino horns said there were fewer bidders and sales than expected. However, a law firm representing breeder John Hume on Saturday said that the two-day auction sets the stage for future sales. It said “very few” bidders signed up because they had fewer than two days to register after a court ordered the government to grant a selling permit to Hume. Hume said a legal trade will undercut rhino poaching. While the court opened the way to a domestic trade in rhino horn, the government said it respects an international trade ban dating to 1977.
TECHNOLOGY
Neuralink to sell stocks
Neuralink Corp, the start-up cofounded by Tesla Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk, has taken steps to sell as much as US$100 million in stock to fund the development of technology that connects human brains with computers. The San Francisco-based company has already gotten US$27 million in funding, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk said via Twitter on Friday that Neuralink is not seeking outside investors.
CONSTRUCTION
Aecon considering sale
Canadian construction company Aecon Group Inc on Friday confirmed as its shares skyrocketed that it has hired advisers to explore a potential sale. Aecon, which helped build Toronto’s CN Tower, is working with Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Montreal on the sales process. The company could attract interest from Chinese bidders, people familiar with the matter said. “Any transaction would be intended to create shareholder value and enhance the company’s capabilities and growth potential,” Aecon said.
ENERGY
YPF hires Citigroup for sale
YPF SA, Argentina’s biggest oil company, has hired Citigroup Inc to help sell its controlling stake in Metrogas SA, the country’s largest gas distributor, according to two people with knowledge of the plan. Citigroup was selected among more than 10 investment banks to advise on what might be the biggest merger and acquisition deal in Argentina this year, according to one of the people.
TRAVEL
Hertz shares dive on report
Hertz Global Holdings Inc shares plunged after an analyst report suggested the troubled rental-car company might have risked defaulting on its debt by canceling plans to redeem bonds last month. The stock fell as much as 11 percent after Xtract Research analyst Valerie Potenza wrote in a report that Hertz’s reneged plan to refinance as much as US$450 million in bonds might have violated covenants. The move could constitute a default on the debt maturing in 2019, because the company told investors it planned to redeem those notes, she wrote.
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