AUTOMAKERS
Renault posts losses
Renault yesterday reported its first loss in a decade and cut its margin target for this year, as it attempts to draw a line under the Carlos Ghosn affair and reboot its Nissan alliance. The French automaker is trying to move on from the internal turmoil sparked by the scandal involving its former CEO Ghosn with a management shake-up. Meanwhile, it is grappling like other automakers with tumbling demand in some key markets like China. Renault posted a loss of 141 million euros (US$153 million) for the group share of net income, in part as a result of charges linked to some of its Chinese joint ventures. The contribution from Nissan, in which Renault has a 43 percent stake, also fell and it was hit by a French deferred tax charge. Renault set an operating margin target next year of between 3 and 4 percent, down from 4.8 percent last year, and sliced its proposed dividend for last year by almost 70 percent from a year earlier.
AIRLINES
Carriers face US$5bn hit
An outbreak of COVID-19 in China could mean a US$4 billion to US$5 billion drop in worldwide airline revenue, the International Civil Aviation Organization said on Thursday. The UN agency reported that 70 airlines have canceled all international flights in and out of China, and 50 others have reduced their operations. Preliminary estimates show this has meant a reduction of nearly 20 million passengers compared with expectations for the first quarter. That figure equates to potential lost revenue of up to US$5 billion, the agency said. “Prior to the outbreak, airlines had planned to increase capacity by 9 percent on international routes to/from China for the first quarter of 2020 compared to 2019,” it said in a statement. However, foreign airline traveler capacity in and out of the country has gone down 80 percent, it added.
FOOD
Chocolatier offers 3D fare
Hotels, pastry chefs and coffee chains can soon start offering guests customized 3D-printed chocolate thanks to a little-known Swiss chocolatier. Barry Callebaut AG, the behind-the-scenes producer of a quarter of the world’s chocolate, is giving gourmet clients access to a method of printing personalized designs en masse, the Zurich-based company said in a statement yesterday. The technology would first be available through the company’s Mona Lisa brand, which makes chocolate decorations, sprinkles and figurines. The move comes as the chocolate industry faces meager growth prospects. Lindt & Spruengli has said it plans to close 50 stores in the US.
AGRICULTURE
India budges on US imports
India has offered to partially open up its poultry and dairy markets in a bid for a limited trade deal during US President Donald Trump’s first official visit to the country this month, people familiar with the protracted talks say. India, the world’s largest milk-producing nation, has traditionally restricted dairy imports to protect the livelihoods of 80 million rural households. It has offered to allow imports of US chicken legs, turkey and produce, such as blueberries and cherries, government sources said, and has offered to cut tariffs on chicken legs from 100 percent to 25 percent. US negotiators want that tariff cut to 10 percent. India is also offering some access to India’s dairy market, but with a 5 percent tariff and quotas, the sources said. However, dairy imports require certification that they are not derived from animals fed internal organs, blood meal or tissues of ruminants.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts