TECHNOLOGY
IBM profit fell 6% in Q4
IBM Corp’s profit beat analysts’ estimates in the fourth quarter, with adjusted earnings, excluding some items, dropping 6 percent from a year earlier to US$5.81 a share as the company focused on cutting costs, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Revenue from continuing operations fell for the 11th-straight quarter, declining 12 percent to US$24.1 billion, the company said. IBM forecast operating earnings for this year of US$15.75 to US$16.50 a share — on the low end of analysts’ estimates, which predicted US$16.50 on average.
INTERNET
Netflix users, profits grow
Streaming video giant Netflix on Tuesday said its global membership swelled to 57.4 million at the end of last year, capping a quarter that also saw profits grow. Netflix said it added 4.3 million subscribers in the past quarter and 13 million for the year. Net profit for the quarter jumped to US$83 million compared with US$48 million a year earlier and US$59 million in the prior quarter. Revenue hit US$1.3 billion in the quarter compared with US$962 million a year ago.
BANKING
Morgan Stanley profit rises
Morgan Stanley’s fourth-quarter profit rose as the investment bank recovered from huge legal expenses last year, but it suffered from the same trading slowdowns at other banks and fell short of Wall Street expectations. The bank on Tuesday said it earned US$1.05 billion, or US$0.47 a share, in the quarter, compared with US$95 million, or US$0.02 a share, a year earlier. Revenue totaled US$7.76 billion, down from US$7.84 billion in the same period a year earlier.
AIRLINES
Delta falls on hedging hit
Delta Air Lines Inc reported a fourth-quarter loss because falling oil prices led it to write down the value of its fuel-hedging contracts, but the airline’s results were still better than Wall Street expected. The company on Tuesday reported a US$712 million loss after taking US$1.4 billion in special charges, mostly hedging losses. Excluding those items, Delta would have earned US$649 million, or US$0.78 per share.
HEALTHCARE
Johnson sees 2015 profit dip
Johnson & Johnson, the world’s biggest maker of healthcare products, on Tuesday forecast lower earnings for this year, as competition cuts into revenue for some of its best-selling drugs. The shares slumped the most in three months. Adjusted profit this year is expected to reach US$6.12 to US$6.27 a share, the company said. That figure excludes an estimated charge of US$0.32 a share for intangible amortization costs. Incorporating that figure, this year’s earnings are expected to be US$5.80 to US$5.95 a share, compared with last year’s adjusted profit of US$5.97 a share.
BEVERAGES
SABMiller sales fall
SABMiller PLC, the world’s No. 2 brewer, reported an unexpected drop in third-quarter beer volume as sales were held back by falling demand in China and a decline in Colombia, its biggest market. So-called organic lager volume fell 1 percent in the three months ended Dec. 31, the London-based company said in a statement yesterday. SABMiller, the maker of Grolsch and Peroni beers, is among European consumer-goods businesses contending with a slowdown in Asia that has compounded sluggish growth in developed markets.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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