AUTOMAKERS
Volvo buoyed by US market
Volvo AB’s fourth-quarter profit surged 30 percent as the Swedish manufacturer reaped the rewards of buoyant truck markets in the US and sold more construction equipment in China. Earnings before interest and taxes adjusted for one-time items increased to 7.33 billion kronor (US$933 million) from 5.66 billion kronor a year earlier, the Gothenburg-based truckmaker said in a statement yesterday. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were estimating profit of 7.29 billion kronor, on average. The operating margin widened from 6.9 percent to 8 percent of revenue. The result pushed Volvo closer to a goal of bringing operating profit consistently above 10 percent of revenue. Efforts to improve profitability, including the elimination of thousands of jobs, were championed by activist shareholder Cevian Capital AB.
AGRICULTURE
Ghana Cocoa to sell debt
Ghana’s cocoa regulator is to sell as much as 2.5 billion Ghanaian cedis (US$554 million) of debt to pay for liabilities and operational costs while pledging to end subsidies for farmers, Ghanaian Deputy Minister of Finance Charles Adu Boahen said. The debt sale is to follow after the Ghana Cocoa Board opted to prop up farmer pay with 984 million Ghanaian cedis in the current season, incurred losses of at least 110 million Ghanaian cedis during the previous crop and had to deal with legacy debts from an administration that was replaced last year. The pledge to end subsidies signal a policy shift after the world’s second-biggest cocoa grower ruled out changing producer payments since setting the minimum price at 7,600 Ghanaian cedis per tonne in October 2016.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Line to expand services
Line Corp, Japan’s biggest messaging service, is expanding into financial services including cryptocurrency trading, loans and insurance. The company established Line Financial Corp on Jan. 10 and has already applied for a license to open a cryptocurrency exchange in Japan, according to a statement yesterday. Line is also considering expanding its cryptocurrency operations to Hong Kong and Luxembourg next, people familiar with the matter said. The company’s shares rose as much as 3.6 percent in Tokyo, adding to gains after Bloomberg News first reported the expansion. Since Line’s listing in July 2016, the company has scaled back its global ambitions to focus on markets where it already has top share — Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Indonesia. Chief executive officer Takeshi Idezawa has set out to transform the messaging app into an all-in-one communications and entertainment service over the next five years.
MINING
Rio accused of tax dodge
Rio Tinto Group has been accused by a Dutch non-profit group of avoiding about US$700 million in taxes related to its Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia. The company denied the allegations. Rio and its Canadian subsidiary Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd used so-called mailbox companies in Luxembourg and the Netherlands to fund the development of the mine in Mongolia, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) said in a report yesterday. The company avoided US$470 million in Canadian taxes through the vehicles and US$230 million in Mongolian taxes, group said. “The flawed SOMO report contains a number of unsubstantiated and incorrect allegations regarding tax,” London-based Rio said in an e-mailed statement.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”