Embattled commodities trader Noble Group Ltd (來寶集團) yesterday announced the sale of its US oil-liquids business to Vitol Group BV and warned of a third-quarter loss of up to US$1.25 billion.
Singapore-listed Noble said in a statement the sale to Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil trader, should generate proceeds of US$582 million, and is the latest move to pay off debts as the firm fights to survive.
The once-mighty company has been hammered since 2015 as plunging commodity prices hit its bottom line while it has also suffered a ratings downgrade and allegations of irregular accounting practices.
Noble said in a statement that it expects a total net loss in the quarter ending Sept. 30 of between US$1.1 billion and US$1.25 billion, after reporting a heavy loss of US$1.75 billion in the second quarter.
“The operating environment continues to be challenging for the group and this impacted performance in [the third quarter of] 2017,” Noble said.
Noble’s shares resumed trading after being halted on Friday pending the announcement of the sale and slipped more than 10 percent to S$0.34.
The firm’s stock has been hammered since the start of the crisis and has sunk about 78 percent this year.
The disposal of Noble’s oil liquids unit, which trades large amounts of crude and refined oil products, came after the sale in July of its US gas and power unit to rival Mercuria Energy America Group Ltd.
“The core of their business has changed to some degree, but they’re still fighting to survive,” KGI Securities Co (凱基證券) trading strategist Nicholas Teo said. “Management has been selling assets to lighten the debt load, and this oil deal is quite significant in size.”
Noble wants to refocus its business on “hard” commodities — those that are mined such as coal and metals — as well as on freight and liquefied natural gas, with an eye on Asia.
It is also reducing its staff to about 400, having had 900 employees at the end of June.
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