TRADE
Court clears trade deal
The EU-Canada free-trade agreement’s provisions to protect investors do not breach EU law, the European Court of Justice ruled yesterday in a major relief for proponents of the deal that came into force in 2017. The judges said that the mechanism to resolve disputes between investors and states in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which critics have said unfairly favor multinationals, is in line with EU law.
AVIATION
Lufthansa losses deepen
German airline group Lufthansa AG plunged deeper into the red in the first quarter, it said yesterday, blaming the rising price of fuel and intense competition in Europe, but sticking to annual targets. Between January and March, the Frankfurt-based group lost 342 million euros (US$382 million), almost nine times worse than in the first quarter of last year. Lufthansa had early last month warned of the looming negative bottom line, suggesting an operating, or underlying, loss of 336 million euros was in the offing — a figure confirmed yesterday. Revenues were up 3 percent year-on-year at 7.9 billion euros. “The first quarter is traditionally a difficult one for airlines,” the group said, with seasonal effects worsened by a 202 million euros rise in fuel costs compared with last year.
BANKING
Lender to buy back shares
Standard Chartered PLC yesterday announced a share buyback of up to US$1 billion as it reported a jump in first-quarter pretax profits. The lender’s first buyback in nearly two decades comes two weeks after it reached a US$1.1 billion settlement for processing transactions that contravened US sanctions on Iran and flouted anti-money laundering requirements. The London-based lender’s first-quarter pretax profits rose 10 percent to US$1.38 billion, it said, sending its shares up 5.2 percent in Hong Kong. “Our first-quarter profit supports our belief that we will generate full-year returns of at least 10 percent by 2021,” chief executive Bill Winters said in a statement. Winters said the company would aim at growing its customer base across Hong Kong, Africa and India.
ENERGY
BP hits profit estimates
BP PLC boosted cash flow and hit the target on profit estimates in the first quarter as rising oil and gas production, and strong trading results offset the effect of lower prices. The company’s performance brightens a mixed picture for Big Oil earnings. While the industry has moved beyond the worst downturn in a generation, it is still enduring volatile markets, with a sharp slump in crude prices late last year followed by a steep rebound in the first few months of this year.
AVIATION
Airbus earnings surge
Airbus SE earnings surged in the first quarter as the European planemaker churned out higher numbers of the A320 narrow-body jet that is the biggest global rival to Boeing Co’s grounded 737 MAX. The company delivered 126 A320s, a model that appears to have overcome a run of engine manufacturing faults just as the 737 faces questions about its future after two fatal crashes in five months. Adjusted earnings before interest and tax jumped almost 40-fold to 549 million euros, according to a statement yesterday, providing a solid starting point for chief executive officer Guillaume Faury, who took over from long-time head Tom Enders on April 10.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by