TELECOMS
S African firm’s profit falls
Telkom SA SOC Ltd cut its dividend and reported a slump in full-year earnings as South Africa’s biggest provider of fixed phone lines struggles with a decline in its traditional voice services. The Pretoria-based company reduced the annual payout to shareholders by 16 percent to 3.55 rand (US$0.29) per share, it said in a statement yesterday. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the year ending in March fell 3.6 percent to 10.5 billion rand. The carrier reported a 47 percent increase in service revenue from mobile customers to 5.15 billion rand, supporting CEO Sipho Maseko’s push into new revenue streams to sustain the company. Telkom started its mobile unit, the country’s fourth-biggest with just over 5 million subscribers, to bolster its service offering to consumers.
PROPERTY
Investa gets takeover offer
Blackstone Group LP offered A$3.14 billion (US$2.38 billion) for Investa Office Fund in an attempt to land one of Australia’s most pursued property companies and dozens of office buildings across the country. The New York-based buyout company offered A$5.25 in cash for each share of the real-estate investment trust, 13 percent more than Friday’s closing price, Investa said in a statement yesterday. Investa’s directors plan to unanimously recommend that investors vote for the deal unless there’s a better offer. Investa has attracted suitors since at least 2015, when Dexus Property Group proposed a deal valued at about A$2.5 billion, a tie-up that was subsequently rejected by unit-holders.
EDUCATION
ISP mulls Vietnam deal
International Schools Partnership Ltd (ISP) is in talks to invest in the Canadian International School Vietnam, people with knowledge of the matter said, as foreign firms flock to Southeast Asian education deals. UK-based ISP, which is backed by Swiss buyout firm Partners Group Holding AG, is conducting due diligence on the school and could purchase a majority stake for about US$150 million including debt, one of the people said. The parties could sign an agreement as soon as next month, the person said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Southeast Asian school operators have been attracting interest from foreign investors including TPG and Swedish buyout firm EQT Partners AB, which are betting that rising incomes will translate into increased education spending.
TURKEY
Announcement boosts lira
The lira and Turkish bonds rallied as the Turkish Central Bank decided to simplify monetary policy. The currency surged the most in more than a year as the bank said it would start using the one-week repo, which has not been used as its main funding tool since January last year, as its policy rate starting on Friday. The one-week rate has been set at 16.5 percent, the bank said in a statement. The change would help convince the market about the bank’s “policy independence and its commitment to do more,” Global Securities analysts including Sertan Kargin wrote in a note in the morning, referring to a news report that said policymakers were planning to set up a more symmetric structure by making the overnight lending and borrowing rates equidistant from the one-week repurchase rate. The lira strengthened 2.8 percent, set for the biggest gain since January last year, to 4.5870 per dollar. Bonds rose, with the yield on 10-year securities falling 46 basis points to 14.22 percent.
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
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
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