AUTOMAKERS
VW optimistic on full year
Volkswagen AG (VW) on Wednesday said it was confident it could defy a worldwide squeeze in vehicle sales over the full year, although unit sales and operating profit fell in the second quarter. Operating profit before special items was down 8.1 percent year-on-year in the quarter at 5.1 billion euros (US$5.68 billion), VW said in a statement. Revenue grew 6.6 percent to 65.2 billion euros, although unit sales were down 2.8 percent at 2.8 million vehicles — falling especially in the vital Chinese market. Net profit surged 24.2 percent to 4.1 billion euros, it said.
AUTOMAKERS
Nissan to slash workforce
Nissan Motor Co yesterday said that it would cut 12,500 jobs and announced a plunge in quarterly net profit as it struggles with weak sales and the arrest of its former chairman. “Nissan will reduce its global production capacity by 10 percent by the end of fiscal year 2022. In line with production optimizations, the company will reduce headcount by roughly 12,500,” the firm said in a statement. Net profit slumped nearly 95 percent to ￥6.4 billion (US$59.23 million) for the three months to last month, from ￥115.8 billion a year earlier, due to falling sales and growing costs.
LUXURY BRANDS
LVMH hits record high
LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE shares yesterday rose to a record in Paris after second-quarter sales breezed past analysts’ estimates, fueled by creative revamps at its Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior fashion brands. Sales of fashion and leather goods rose 20 percent on an organic basis in the second quarter, the company said on Wednesday. LVMH’s first-half profit from recurring operations rose 14 percent to 5.3 billion euros.
BRAZIL
Cash stimulus for workers
The government hopes to inject US$11.2 billion into its slowing economy after announcing a plan on Wednesday to put some extra cash in the pockets of workers. Workers are to be allowed to withdraw up to 500 reais (US$133) this year and a certain percentage next year. President Jair Bolsonaro said that the extra money would help about 63 million people with “debts and overdue water, electricity and gas bills.” The stimulus is expected to add 2.5 percentage points to GDP per capita over 10 years and create 3 million jobs.
SOFTWARE
Salesforce, Alibaba team up
Salesforce.com Inc on Wednesday unveiled a partnership with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) to enter the greater Chinese software market, chasing new business in Asia despite the US-China trade dispute. Alibaba is to sell Salesforce cloud-based software for clients’ sales, customer service and commerce needs in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Macau, the companies said in a statement.
CHIPMAKERS
SK Hynix dives on demand
South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc yesterday posted an 89 percent quarterly profit plunge amid sluggish demand, as a spat between Seoul and Tokyo threatens earnings. Operating profit fell for the third consecutive quarter to 637.6 billion won (US$539.74 million) and net earnings were down 88 percent to 537 billion won, while total sales were down 38 percent on the year to 6.4 trillion won. Market demand had “fallen short of earlier expectations,” SK Hynix said, adding that the price fall was “steeper than anticipated.”
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
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