AUTOMAKERS
Honda’s Q3 profit up 21%
Honda Motor Co yesterday reported a 21 percent jump in its profit in the last quarter on cost cuts and healthy motorcycle sales. The Tokyo-based Honda, which makes the Fit subcompact, Odyssey minivan and Asimo robot, reported profit of ￥210.7 billion (US$1.9 billion), up from ￥174 billion. Quarterly sales edged up nearly 2 percent from a year earlier to ￥3.84 trillion, it said.
ENERGY
BP’s Q3 net profit doubles
BP PLC yesterday said its third-quarter net profit doubled on sharply higher crude oil prices. Bottom-line profit after tax surged to US$3.35 billion in the three months to last month, compared with US$1.77 billion a year earlier, the British energy major said in an earnings statement. Underlying replacement-cost profit, which excludes fluctuations in the value of crude oil inventories, also doubled to US$3.8 billion. Revenues jumped almost a third to US$79.5 billion.
BANKING
UBS boss bought shares
UBS AG chief executive officer Sergio Ermotti bought US$13.1 million of shares in Switzerland’s largest bank shortly after its investor day last week, the largest management purchase in years, in a show of confidence to owners of the stock. A spokeswoman for UBS confirmed the purchase. It was the first purchase of the stock by a senior executive since December 2016, data from the Zurich-based SIX Swiss Exchange showed.
AVIATION
Lufthansa’s Q3 profit falls
Lufthansa AG reported falling profits in the third quarter, hit by higher fuel costs and the pricey integration of defunct competitor Air Berlin. Net profit at the Frankfurt-based group fell 10 percent year-on-year, to 1.07 billion euros (US$1.2 billion). Operating profit adjusted for some one-off items — Lufthansa’s preferred measure of its performance — also fell, shedding 10.8 percent to 1.35 billion euros. Revenues grew 1.5 percent to 9.96 billion euros.
TECHNOLOGY
S&P downgrades IBM
S&P Global Ratings on Monday downgraded IBM Corp’s debt rating following its acquisition of cloud computing firm Red Hat Inc for a US$34 billion in cash. S&P said the transaction would increase IBM’s debt level, prompting it to cut the firm’s credit rating to “A” from “A+” as well lower its the outlook on the firm to negative. S&P also said it has changed the outlook on Red Hat’s debt rating to “positive,” and expects to raise the grade to “A” once the deal closes late next year, the same as IBM.
UNITED STATES
Tax cuts did not affect plans
The large bulk of US firms say they did not alter their hiring or investment plans due to the massive tax cuts in December last year, a quarterly survey from the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) released on Monday found.
They also did not change their plans due to the confrontation with numerous US trade partners, especially China, the survey found. Of the 116 firms surveyed, 81 percent said they had not changed plans due to the tax cuts — an increase from previous surveys, NABE said. Asked about tariffs, quotas and the threats to withdraw from free-trade agreements, 77 percent said they had not changed their hiring, investment or pricing plans. However, NABE said that more manufacturers made changes to react to trade disputes, including 46 percent raising prices and 38 percent delaying investments.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
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