AGRICULTURE
Aid could influence planting
The latest round of farm aid by US President Donald Trump’s administration might fail in its aim to avoid influencing US planting decisions. The US$16 billion package — offered to help producers struggling in the wake of a US-China trade war — would include direct payments to farmers. To get them, growers must plant crops such as soybeans, corn and wheat. That seems simple enough, except that after heavy rains and flooding in the nation’s heartland this spring, farmers were expected to discontinue their planting plans. Speculation was mounting that growers would instead opt to make claims for so-called prevented plant insurance. As of Sunday, corn sowing was at the slowest pace on record for this time of year. The US Department of Agriculture just “effectively extended” the spring planting season, said Sam Hudson, an agriculture marketing consultant at Cornbelt Marketing in Brimfield, Illinois.
AUTOMAKERS
Moody’s cuts Nissan rating
Moody’s Investors Service yesterday cut Nissan Motor Co’s credit rating by a notch, citing Nissan’s weakening profitability and margins over the past two years. The issuer rating was lowered from “A2” to “A3,” the ratings company said in a statement. Moody’s had placed the Yokohama, Japan-based automaker on negative watch in February. The latest downgrade came days after S&P Global Ratings placed the automaker’s rating on negative watch, saying that there is a more than a one-in-three chance of a further delay in Nissan’s profit recovery. Earlier this month, Nissan cut its full-year earnings forecast after third-quarter profit missed analysts’ estimates, adding to fallout from the arrest of former chairman Carlos Ghosn. It would take several years to gauge the success of Nissan’s strategy of emphasizing margin over unit sales growth, refreshing old models and lowering discounted bulk sales, Moody’s said.
OIL
Russia to take back dirty oil
Russia plans to take back about 1 million tonnes of contaminated oil from Belarus as it cleans up the Druzhba export pipeline section leading to Poland and Germany, four industry sources familiar with the plan told reporters. The plan was discussed at talks in Warsaw on Thursday between Russian, Belarussian and European companies. Another roughly 1 million tonnes stuck in Poland and Germany would be left there to be dealt with by those countries, the sources said. The plan for contaminated crude in the pipeline further west, in Poland and Germany, is that it would be taken off by local refiners, three of the four sources said.
RETAIL
British sales flat last month
British shoppers last month paused for breath after months of strong buying, according to official data that showed continued underlying strength of consumer spending during the Brexit crisis. Monthly retail sales volumes were flat last month, the British Office for National Statistics said, compared with a median forecast for a 0.3 percent decline in a Reuters poll of economists. However, in the three months to last month, sales increased 1.8 percent, the fastest growth by this measure since August last year. Consumer spending has been a relative bright spot for the British economy, contrasting with businesses cutting on investment throughout last year and slower global growth. Compared with April last year, sales were up by 5.2 percent after a 6.7 percent annual rise in March, better than expected in the Reuters poll.
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured