MULTINATIONALS
GE cuts share profits
General Electric Co (GE) trimmed last year’s earnings by US$1.56 billion to align its results with new US accounting rules for sales of industrial equipment. A profit cut of US$0.17 a share was US$0.01 worse than the reduction GE had signaled to investors in recent weeks. Earnings for 2016 were pared US$0.13, the maker of jet engines and gas turbines said in a regulatory filing late on Friday. GE also said the effects of the US tax overhaul would trim US$0.14 a share from last year’s earnings with another small bite coming from a change in inventory measurement. After the changes, GE lost US0.99 a share last year, worse than the originally reported loss of US$0.68 a share.
AUTOMAKERS
JLR to cut short-term posts
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), Britain’s biggest carmaker, is poised to announce the elimination of about 1,000 posts filled by workers on short-term contracts as it grapples with slumping UK sales of diesel autos and uncertainty surrounding Brexit. The firm is to formally announce the cuts tomorrow when it reveals production plans for the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year to workers, a company statement on Friday said. JLR said that it is continuing to recruit large numbers of engineers, graduates and apprentices as it invests in new products and technologies, and remains committed to UK plants in which it has spent more than £4 billion since 2010.
AUTOMAKERS
GM to halve factory team
General Motors Co (GM) is to fire as many as 1,500 workers at the end of June at the Ohio factory building the Chevrolet Cruze compact car, undercutting US President Donald Trump’s bombast about bringing back auto jobs. The Lordstown assembly plant would operate on only one shift as part of the cutback, General Motors spokeswoman Dayna Hart said in an e-mail. The company would be roughly halving the workforce at the factory, although Hart wrote that it would remain open for the foreseeable future.
SPAIN
Moody’s upgrades rating
Ratings agency Moody’s on Friday raised the country’s sovereign debt grade, citing improved growth prospects and a stronger banking sector. The upgrade reflects the government’s steps to “address the weaknesses in the banking sector” and an “increasingly balanced growth profile,” despite remaining “institutional weaknesses,” the agency said in a statement. The agency moved the debt rating up a notch to the upper-medium investment grade “Baa1” and said the rating outlook remains stable.
INTERNET
Backpage founder on bail
Backpage.com’s cofounder was on Friday released on a US$1 million bond secured by real estate in Phoenix after pleading not guilty to state and federal charges stemming from a broad investigation of the sex advertisement Web site. Michael Lacey, whom prosecutors have called the mastermind of the operation, would also wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and disclose all his foreign and domestic financial assets, Magistrate Judge Bridget Bade of the US District Court in Arizona ordered. Several Backpage.com employees were charged in a 93-count indictment unsealed on Monday that accused them of facilitating prostitution. Lacey faces 79 criminal counts.
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
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],”
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
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