CURRENCIES
HK defends peg again
Hong Kong intervened to defend its currency peg for a second day after the Hong Kong dollar fell to the weak end of its trading band. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority bought HK$9.5 billion (US$1.21 billion) of HK dollars overnight, the third-biggest intervention since the defense began last month. The authority mopped up HK$1.57 billion on Wednesday. The de facto central bank has now spent US$7.95 billion protecting its currency system, which has the effect of tightening liquidity in a territory that has grown fat on ultra-low borrowing costs. The three-month borrowing rate is 1.75 percent, near the highest since December 2008 and up from 0.8 percent a year earlier.
TECHNOLOGY
Tencent profits surge
Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) shares surged after delivering a record profit that topped analyst estimates, calming investors who had braced for a big hit to margins. The stock climbed as much as 7.1 percent in Hong Kong, its biggest intraday gain in more than two years. China’s largest social media and gaming company posted a faster-than-expected 61 percent jump in net income last quarter as growth on mobile bounced back, outstripping estimates by almost one-third. Gross profit margin in the quarter was more than 50 percent, higher than the 47 percent expected by analysts.
VIDEO GAMES
Rovio says profits will dip
Angry Birds publisher Rovio Entertainment Oyj forecast a short-term decline in profitability, saying that its spending on gaining users would take a longer time to generate positive returns. The company said it could take as long as 12 months to pay back its investments in user acquisition, from a previous estimate of up to 10 months. It also curtailed that marketing spend by 11 percent to 14.6 million euros (US$17.2 million) in the first quarter. Rovio is still forecasting full-year revenue of 260 million euros to 300 million euros and estimates that adjusted earnings before interest and taxes would be 9 percent to 11 percent of net sales.
TECHNOLOGY
Cisco upbeat on sales
Cisco Systems Inc gave an upbeat forecast for fiscal fourth-quarter sales, a signal of healthy demand for equipment and software that runs the Internet and corporate networks. Revenue in the current period would rise 4 to 6 percent from a year earlier, the San Jose, California-based company said in a statement on Wednesday. That indicates sales of US$12.6 billion to US$12.9 billion, compared with an average analyst prediction of US$12.7 billion. Adjusted profit in the quarter ending in July will be US$0.68 to US$0.70 a share, while analysts projected US$69. Third-quarter sales and profit also topped estimates.
E-COMMERCE
Ocado signs US deal
UK food deliverer Ocado Group PLC said that US retailer Kroger Co has agreed an exclusive deal to use its technology for grocery deliveries, securing the online supermarket pioneer’s entry into the world’s biggest market and sending its shares up 50 percent. The agreement, Kroger’s response to Amazon.com Inc’s purchase of Whole Foods Markets Inc, takes Ocado’s home-delivery platform into the US for the first time and marks the fourth major deal it has signed with supermarkets in six months. Ocado said that it believes Kroger, which had sales of US$122 billion in its last fiscal year, is the grocer best-positioned to succeed in the US sector.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day