BANKS
HSBC profit rises 4.6%
Global bank HSBC Holdings PLC yesterday reported that its pre-tax profit in the first half of the year rose 4.6 percent as its strategy focused on growing markets paid off. The London-based bank’s US$10.7 billion pre-tax profit in the January-to-June period compared with US$10.2 billion a year earlier. Quarterly pre-tax profit surged to US$5.96 billion from US$4.8 billion in the second quarter last year. The bank said net profit was US$7.2 billion in the first half, up from US$7 billion a year earlier, while revenue rose 4.2 percent from a year earlier to US$27.2 billion from US$26.2 billion a year earlier. Total assets climbed to US$2.61 trillion as of June 30 from US$2.52 trillion as of Dec. 30 last year, it said.
TOBACCO
Japan Tobacco buys Akij
Japan Tobacco Inc agreed to purchase Bangladesh’s second-largest cigarette maker for 124.3 billion takas (US$1.5 billion) as the company continues to expand its presence in emerging markets. The maker of Mevius and Winston cigarettes is acquiring the tobacco business of Akij Group, which holds about a 20 percent share of the market in Bangladesh, Japan Tobacco said in a statement yesterday. The tobacco company has been buying up businesses in markets where smoking is more prevalent, which has helped cushion sales in the face of tighter smoking regulations in most areas around the globe.
TECHNOLOGY
Softbank profit increases
Japanese company Softbank Group Corp said its profits grew to ¥313.7 billion (US$2.8 billion) in the latest quarter as it saw gains in its main investment fund. The results reported yesterday represent a more than 50-fold increase in profits for the April-to-June quarter compared with the same period last year. Sales edged up 4 percent to ¥2.3 trillion. Softbank’s Vision Fund in May agreed to sell its stake in Indian online retailer Flipkart Pvt Ltd to Walmart Inc. Sales were flat at the Tokyo-based company’s US mobile provider Sprint Corp, dropping 0.4 percent to US$8.1 billion.
GERMANY
Factory orders drop 4%
Official data showed that factory orders dropped a steep 4 percent in June compared with the previous month, led lower by a drop in demand from outside the eurozone. The figure released yesterday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs compared with a gain of 2.6 percent the previous month. The ministry said that orders in the second quarter were down 1.6 percent overall compared with the previous quarter, largely because of lower demand for investment goods such as factory machinery.
INDONESIA
Economy makes gain in Q2
The economy rose 5.3 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the Bureau of Statistics bureau said in Jakarta yesterday. While that was better than the 5.1 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey and is the fastest pace since 2013, it is nowhere near the 7 percent goal President Joko Widodo set for himself when he took office in 2014. Compared with the previous quarter, GDP rose 4.2 percent, the bureau said. In the second quarter, household consumption increased 5.1 percent from a year earlier, while government spending rose 5.3 percent and fixed capital formation grew 5.9 percent, it said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to