AUTOMAKERS
Toyota still world No. 1
Toyota Motor Corp’s global sales for the first nine months of the year reached 7.41 million vehicles, little changed from the previous year but outpacing General Motors (GM) to keep its lead as the world’s top-selling automaker. Detroit-based GM said earlier this month that its global sales for January through last month totaled 7.25 million vehicles, up 4.6 percent from a year earlier. Toyota’s vehicle sales for the first three quarters inched up 0.1 percent. Toyota said yesterday that it sold about 2.5 million cars, trucks and buses in the July-to-September quarter, led by overseas growth.
DIAMONDS
Alrosa to raise US$1.3bn
Russian state-owned diamond miner Alrosa expects to raise US$1.3 billion in a share sale, a figure at the bottom of a previously announced range, in a government privatization drive that has been hit by delays and weak investor sentiment. Market sources said US investors, including asset management group Lazard, were the biggest buyers of the shares, purchasing up to 60 percent of the 14 percent stake in Alrosa, which vies with Anglo American-owned De Beers as for the mantle of the world’s largest diamond miner. Alrosa’s offer price of 35 roubles per share puts the company’s market capitalization at 258 billion roubles (US$8.12 billion). It had been pegged at between 35 roubles and 38 roubles a share.
INTERNET
Sohu profit falls 20 percent
Sohu.com Inc (搜狐), operator of a popular Chinese Web portal, said yesterday its quarterly profit fell 20 percent due to higher expenses, but revenues rose. Sohu said it earned US$41 million in the three months ended Sept. 30 compared with US$51.5 million a year earlier. Revenues rose 29 percent over a year earlier to US$368 million. Profits were squeezed by a 53 percent rise in operating expenses due to more staff and higher costs for marketing, especially for mobile products and online games.
GREEN ENERGY
JAG to build 13MW station
JAG Energy Co, a unit of Japan Asia Group Ltd, will build a 13 megawatt solar power station in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo.Construction will start in February and be completed in March 2015, Tokyo-based Japan Asia Group said in a statement yesterday. No financial terms were disclosed. Toshiba Corp will supply solar panels and electricity generated at the plant will be sold to Tokyo Electric Power Co, according to the statement.
CURRENCY
Russia cuts gold reserves
Russia reduced gold reserves for the first time in a year last month as Mexico cut holdings for a 17th straight month, according to IMF data. Russian reserves declined about 0.37 tonnes to 1,015.1 tonnes, while Canada’s holdings fell to 3 tonnes last month from 3.1 tonnes, and Mexico’s lost 0.1 tonne to 123.5 tonnes, the IMF data showed. Central-bank gold purchases may total 350 tonnes this year, the World Gold Council predicts, after they added 534.6 tonnes last year, the most since 1964.
INVESTMENT
G4S rejects US$2.5bn offer
G4S said it had rejected a ￡1.55 billion (US$2.5 billion) offer for its cash solutions business from British private equity group Charterhouse Capital Partners, saying the bid undervalued the unit. The company, the world’s largest security services firm, said yesterday that the nature and timing of the non-binding offer, which was made by the group on Tuesday last week, was “highly opportunistic.”
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
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