INDONESIA
Central bank cuts rate
The central bank yesterday cut its key interest rate for a fourth straight month to spur the economy amid a deteriorating outlook for global growth. Bank Indonesia lowered the seven-day reverse repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 5 percent, as predicted by 23 out of 30 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The rest had forecast no change. The latest round of easing comes after the IMF revised down its forecast for global growth and cut its GDP growth projection for the nation to 5 percent this year, down from 5.2 percent it estimated in July.
ECONOMY
Eurozone manufacturing falls
The eurozone economy stayed at the brink of contraction as manufacturing shrank for a ninth month. IHS Markit’s Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to 50.2 this month, missing economist estimates of 50.3. The reading above 50 — a level that divides expansion from contraction — signals that the private sector in the eurozone is barely growing at the start of the fourth quarter. The outlook is gloomy, with expectations sinking to their worst since 2013, according to Markit. A rebound in French services provided a boost, while the pace of German decline slowed. The rest of the region showed weakness.
CHEMICALS
BASF maintains forecast
German chemical giant BASF AG yesterday left forecasts unchanged for this year, despite reporting falling sales and profits in the third quarter, blaming trade conflicts and uncertainty for the lingering gloom. Net profit at the group slumped 24 percent year-on-year in the July-to-September period to 911 million euros (US$1.01 billion). Sales edged back 2 percent to 15.2 billion euros, with underlying profit down 1 percent at 1.4 billion euros. Looking ahead to the full year, BASF confirmed its forecast of a fall of up to 30 percent in operating profit before special items on a “slight decline” in sales.
INTERNET
TikTok downloads fall
TikTok, a viral short video app run by Chinese start-up ByteDance Inc (字節跳動), saw global user downloads fall for the first time since its inception two years ago, data from Sensor Tower showed. The app amassed an estimated 177 million first-time users across the Apple App Store and Google Play for the third quarter. That represented a 4 percent decline from a year earlier. It was the first time the hit app saw new installs drop on a quarterly basis, the mobile data provider said. In total, TikTok has been installed by about 564 million users so far this year and has been installed 1.45 billion times since launching. “With any app growth, there will come a time when it plateaus, especially since TikTok had grown so much,” Reprise Digital managing director Alvin Foo said.
CHIPMAKERS
SK Hynix profit suffers
South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc, the world’s second-largest memorychip maker, posted its lowest quarterly profit in three years as it suffers from a long-running slump in the global chip market, it said yesterday. Operating profit for SK Hynix, which supplies chips to companies from Apple Inc to Huawei Technologies Co (華為), dropped 93 percent annually to 473 billion won (US$403 million) in the July-to-September period, the company said. Net profit plunged 89 percent to 495 billion won, while sales fell 40 percent to 6.8 trillion won.
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
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
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
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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