INTERNET
Dropbox ups the ante for IPO
Cloud data service Dropbox Inc set a share price of US$21 for its NASDAQ market debut (IPO), a higher bar than expected, which values the start-up at about US$8 billion. Shares in the San Francisco-based technology firm were to begin trading yesterday, with a goal of raising about US$750 million. The company’s shares use the symbol “DBX.” Dropbox also plans a US$100 million stock sale to the venture capital arm of Salesforce.com Inc, according to an earlier filing.
OIL AND GAS
PetroChina triples profit
China’s biggest oil producer, PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣), tripled its profit last year, rebounding on firmer crude prices, the company said. Net profit last year rose to 22.8 billion yuan (US$3.61 billion), compared with just 7.86 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) in 2016, the company said on Thursday. PetroChina also said it is to pay a fresh dividend to shareholders of more than 11 billion yuan. Added to a more than 12 billion yuan dividend for the first half announced in August last year, total dividends for last year were about equal to PetroChina’s full-year annual profit.
TECHNOLOGY
Tencent slumps after sell-off
Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) shares slumped in Hong Kong after Naspers Ltd, its biggest investor, raised HK$76.9 billion (US$9.8 billion) selling stock at a discount. Shares fell as much as 7.8 percent to HK$405 in trading early yesterday. Naspers, a South African media and investment company, sold 190 million shares, it said in a filing with the exchange yesterday. That suggests a price of HK$405 per share, Bloomberg calculations showed. At the end of the session, Tencent shares fell more than 4 percent.
APPAREL
Nike’s quarerly sales jump
Nike Inc shares on Thursday surged in after-hours trading after it reported a jump in quarterly sales and signaled improving market conditions in North America. The US sports apparel and sneaker giant reported a loss of US$921 million in the quarter ending on Feb. 28, due to US$2 billion in one-off expenses connected to US tax reform. Nike reported US$1.4 billion in profits in the same period one year earlier. In contrast, revenues rose seven percent to US$9.0 billion, thanks to big gains in sales in China, Europe, the Middle East and Africa that offset a decline in North America.
FINANCE
CommBank to settle case
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CommBank) plans to enter mediation with the country’s financial intelligence agency over a major money laundering civil case that could be hugely costly for the lender. The nation’s biggest bank late on Thursday said that at the request of both parties, orders were made in the Federal Court “for the matter to be referred to mediation,” which has to take place before May 25.
JAPAN
Core inflation up to 1%
Japan’s consumer prices edged up 1.0 percent last month, but inflation was still far below a longstanding target, government data showed yesterday. The data showed that the core inflation rate, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, stood at 1.0 percent, up from 0.9 percent over the previous three months. With fresh food and energy stripped out, prices rose by even less — just 0.5 percent last month, the data showed.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last