AUTOMAKERS
Ford expects China rebound
Ford Motor Co’s partner in China, Chongqing Changan Automobile Co (重慶長安汽車), expects sales to rebound this year as they introduce more models to help reverse losses in the world’s biggest vehicle market. The venture is to speed up the rollout of new cars, including those under the Lincoln brand, to revive sales, Changan president Zhu Huarong (朱華榮) said in an interview yesterday. Automakers are reeling from a decline in deliveries in China, contributing to a fourth-quarter loss of US$534 million for Ford. Sales at the venture dropped 54 percent last year and might have contributed to profit plunging as much as 93 percent at Changan.
E-COMMERCE
Safaricom, Alibaba team up
Safaricom PLC, Kenya’s biggest mobile operator, agreed to a partnership with a unit of Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd (阿里巴巴) that is to facilitate electronic payments. The deal extends Safaricom customers’ ability to use its mobile-money service, M-Pesa, outside Kenya. The partnership allows shoppers on AliExpress to pay for purchases using M-Pesa. It targets micro-traders in Kenya who source goods from China, the Nairobi-based company said in a statement yesterday. Mobile money accounts for 30 percent of Safaricom’s revenue and is forecast to grow 14 percent this financial year. About 46 percent of international e-commerce transactions in Kenya are on AliExpress, chief customer officer Sylvia Mulinge told a briefing.
EQUITIES
Meituan freeze to end
The worst may be to come for Meituan Dianping (美團點評), as key investors who could only watch the stock shed more than US$12 billion in market value since it listed are to be able to join in the selling next week. A six-month lockup during which employees and cornerstone investors are banned from disposing of their shares is set to expire next week. Meituan shares have dropped 23 percent since listing in September last year, and were dumped yesterday after the food delivery company reported widening losses for the December quarter.
MALAYSIA
PM mulling airline options
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said he is studying options for flagship carrier Malaysian Airline System Bhd, including whether to invest more funds, sell it off or shut it down. Malaysia Airlines has sought to turn itself around since being taken private by sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd in 2014. Khazanah is demanding the carrier come up with a strategic plan to compete in the industry after pouring 6 billion ringgit (US$1.47 billion) into the airline to make it profitable.
OIL
Mars Blend value surges
Heavy, higher-sulfur crude on the US Gulf Coast surged in value on Monday as Saudi Arabia was said to extend its deeper production cuts through next month. Meanwhile, a power outage that darkened most of Venezuela this weekend curtailed output from the nation’s already-fragile oil operations. High-sulfur Mars Blend crude was just US$0.40 a barrel below Light Louisiana Sweet, the narrowest gap since 2011. Western Canadian Select, a heavy, high-sulfur oil from Alberta, was valued at about US$3.75 a barrel above US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for delivery next month at Nederland, Texas, people familiar with the matter said. In December last year, it was worth at least US$2 a barrel below WTI, two of the people said.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
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