FINANCE
S&P cuts Russia’s rating
The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) credit agency yesterday cut Russia’s credit rating for the first time in more than five years, citing the capital flight and risk to investment in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. Russia’s economic growth slowed to 0.8 percent in the first quarter, sharply worse than earlier forecast while spooked investors pulled about US$70 billion out of the country — more than in all of last year. However, the cut in Russia’s rating from “BBB” to “BBB-” is the most tangible economic result of Russia’s policies toward Ukraine so far. “BBB-” is just a step above a speculative or non-investment grade.
TELECOMS
Nokia excludes India plant
Nokia Oyj will exclude its India phone factory from a 5.44 billion euro (US$7.5 billion) agreement to sell its mobile phone business to Microsoft Corp amid a legal battle over a tax dispute in the country. “We are leaving out the plant because of the tax issues,” Poonam Kaul, a Nokia India spokeswoman, said by telephone on Thursday. The plant, one of the Espoo, Finland-based company’s largest phone factories, will make products for Microsoft as part of a servicing agreement, Kaul said.
INTERNET
Baidu profit surges 24.1%
Baidu Inc (百度), operator of China’s most popular Internet search engine, says its quarterly profit jumped 24.1 percent over a year earlier as its mobile business grew. The Beijing-based company yesterday said it earned 2.5 billion yuan (US$407.8 million) in the three months ending March 31. Revenue rose 59.1 percent to 9.5 billion yuan. In a statement, chairman Robin Li (李彥宏) cited success in search and app distribution for the growth and said Baidu wants to expand in new areas such as location-based services.
INTERNET
Amazon beats expectations
Amazon.com Inc posted higher-than-expected sales growth in the first quarter and boosted its investments in technology, content and warehouses as the e-commerce giant branches out into new businesses. Revenue rose 23 percent from a year ago to US$19.74 billion, more than the average analyst estimate of US$19.4 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The Seattle-based company reported net income of US$108 million, or US$0.23 per share. That compares with net income of US$82 million, or US$0.18 per share last year. Analysts expected US$0.21 per share, according to FactSet.
AUTOMAKERS
Honda profit jumps 56.4%
Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co yesterday said its fiscal year net profit soared to US$5.6 billion, thanks to brisk sales and a weaker yen. For the year to March, Honda said it booked a net profit of ￥574 billion, up 56.4 percent from a year earlier, while revenue rose about 20 percent to ￥11.84 trillion. The company forecast a profit of ￥595 billion for the current year to March 2015.
GAMBLING
Bookmaker to reduce shops
William Hill PLC yesterday said it would close 109 of its British betting shops this year, blaming the decision on a tax increase on high stakes gambling machines. The firm, Britain’s largest bookmaker, said operating profit fell 14 percent in the first quarter of the year, hit by big payouts to gamblers on two weekends on which many of the top soccer sides had won. William Hill said the closure of the betting shops would put 420 jobs at risk and result in exceptional costs of up to ￡24 million (US$40.3 million).
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
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