TRADE
China defends US exports
China yesterday said that it has not intentionally sought a trade surplus with the US, after US President Donald Trump called the US’ trade deficit with the country “embarrassing” and “horrible.” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) made the comments at a regular briefing in Beijing. Trump is to begin a trip to Asia today, visiting five countries, including China. He on Wednesday also told reporters that every trade deal the US has is “disastrous.”
PROPERTY
Li Ka-shing logs US$5bn sale
A landmark skyscraper owned by Hong Kong’s richest man, CK Hutchinson Holdings chairman Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), has sold for a record price of more than US$5 billion, the company confirmed on Wednesday. The rumored sale of The Center, Hong Kong’s fifth-tallest building, was first reported last month. Li’s CK Asset Holdings Ltd (長江實業) said the sale of its stake in the building had gone through for HK$40.2 billion (US$5.15 billion) — a record for a Hong Kong office tower, according to Bloomberg.
UNITED STATES
Manufacturing PMI slips
Factories grew more slowly last month, but manufacturing remains healthy. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, on Wednesday said that its manufacturing index dipped to 58.7 last month, from a 13-year high 60.8 in September. Manufacturers are on a 14-month winning streak. New orders, production, hiring and export orders all grew, although more slowly. Sixteen out of 18 industries reported growth last month, led by paper producers.
ENERGY
Shell profits triple in Q3
Royal Dutch Shell PLC yesterday said that net profit almost tripled to more than US$4 billion in the third quarter, helped largely by recovering oil prices. Profit after tax rocketed to US$4.087 billion in the three months to September, from US$1.375 billion in the third quarter of last year, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant said in a statement. The group said earnings benefited mainly from stronger refining and chemicals industry conditions, increased realized oil and gas prices, and higher production from new fields.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Qualcomm forecast robust
Qualcomm Inc on Wednesday issued a surprisingly bullish forecast for the current quarter, showing that robust demand for the company’s chips in China is making up for lost revenue from a bruising legal brawl with Apple Inc. Sales in the fiscal first quarter will be US$5.5 billion to US$6.3 billion. Earnings per share, excluding some items, will be US$0.85 to US$0.95, the San Diego-based company said in a statement.
AUTOMAKERS
US October sales fall 1.3%
Increased demand from rental car companies, strong truck and SUV sales, and recovery from hurricanes in Florida and Texas were not enough to push US auto sales into positive territory for last month. Sales for the month fell 1.3 percent to 1.35 million vehicles compared with the previous year, as slowing demand made it almost certain that this year will be the first year with declining sales in seven years, according to Autodata Corp data released on Wednesday. Ford Motor Co, Honda Motor Co, Nissan Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG all reported gains for the month.
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