TELECOMS
Vodafone back in the black
British giant Vodafone yesterday announced a return to annual profit, as it revealed that long-serving chief executive Vittorio Colao would step down later this year. Chief financial officer Nick Read is to succeed Colao from October, with the announcement coming less than a week after Vodafone unveiled a deal to turn it into Europe’s largest cable and broadband operator by buying assets from US peer Liberty Global. Vodafone posted a net profit of 2.4 billion euros (US$2.9 billion) in the 12 months to the end of March, which compared with a loss after tax of 6.3 billion euros the previous year, the group said in a statement. The turnaround pointed to a “year of significant operational and strategic achievement, and strong financial performance,” Colao said.
VIETNAM
Fitch upgrades rating
The nation won a sovereign rating upgrade from Fitch Ratings on strong economic growth and rising foreign-exchange reserves and. The rating on the nation’s long-term, foreign currency-denominated debt was raised one level to “BB,” with a stable outlook, Fitch said in a statement yesterday. The upgrade puts Vietnam at the second-highest speculative grade and on a par with Costa Rica. The government has committed to containing debt and reforming its state-owned enterprises, boosting its track record of policymaking. Reserves are forecast to climb to about US$66 billion by the end of this year from US$49 billion last year, while general government debt is likely to decline to below 50 percent of GDP by next year, according to Fitch calculations.
CHINA
Investment, sales weak
The government reported weaker-than-expected investment and retail sales last month, and a drop in home sales, clouding its economic outlook. Fixed asset investment grew the slowest since 1999 and the pace of retail sales softened to a four-month low, data showed yesterday, suggesting a loss of momentum in the world’s second-largest economy following generally soft readings in March. The lone bright spot was industrial output, which jumped more than expected as the automobile sector rebounded and steel production surged. Industrial output rose 7 percent last month, the National Bureau of Statistics said, from a seven-month low of 6 percent in March. The statistics bureau said Sino-US trade frictions have yet to make an impact on the economy.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla unveils reorganization
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk on Monday told employees that the electric automaker is being reorganized to speed up production of Model 3 vehicles — a key to profitability at the fast-growing firm. “We are flattening the management structure to improve communication, combining functions where sensible and trimming activities that are not vital to the success of our mission,” Musk said in an internal note. Musk said Tesla is on the road to hitting goals in coming months for the more affordable Model 3 and achieving profitability by the end of this year.
INSURANCE
Allianz profit up 6.8%
Allianz SE’s first-quarter profit rose 6.8 percent, boosted by US President Donald Trump’s changes to US corporate tax and lower restructuring charges. Income from property and casualty premiums rose as customers opted for more coverage after last year’s US hurricanes and California wildfires contributed to a record year for losses.
Agencies
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
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