General Motors Co (GM) is laying the groundwork to achieve 10 percent profit margins by mid-decade by launching new models and taking better advantage of its global scale, North American chief financial officer Chuck Stevens said.
The largest US automaker needs an additional US$2.5 billion to US$3 billion in earnings against its current revenue base to reach its goal. From 2010 to last year, the company’s margins averaged 7.4 percent.
“We just do not get enough economics of scale and leverage off of our global business model,” Stevens said during an investor conference held on the same day as the New York Auto Show. “But we’re addressing it through a number of initiatives.”
Over the next four years, GM will be launching new vehicles at twice the pace of the previous four years. By 2016, nearly 90 percent of GM’s sales volumes will be drawn from recently launched models, which will help boost prices.
GM expects an additional revenue boost from turning its luxury Cadillac nameplate into a global brand. This week, GM unveiled a longer Cadillac CTS mid-size sedan redesigned to better compete with German rivals.
Over the next three to four years, GM also expects to save about US$1 billion a year in part by developing more of its models on global platforms. This strategy will allow GM to save money by using common components to build a broader range of vehicles.
About 60 percent of the vehicles sold by GM are currently built on global platforms. By 2018, GM hopes to increase that to 95 percent, much like its competitors Volkswagen AG and Hyundai Motor Co.
GM also expects to double its entry-level hourly workforce in the US to about 10,000 over the next two to three years. These workers have lower salaries than veteran workers.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
IMAGE SENSORS: The Japanese company would be the controlling shareholder of the venture, with development and production lines to be set up in Kumamoto Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp to create a joint venture to develop and produce next-generation images sensors. The partnership seeks to explore and address emerging opportunities in physical artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as automotive and robotics, paving the way for innovations and expanded technological advancements, TSMC said in a statement. Sony would be the majority and controlling shareholder of the joint venture, the statement said, adding that the company would set up development and production lines in its newly constructed fab in Kumamoto Prefecture’s
RSS