MINING
Rio eyes carbon neutral
Rio Tinto PLC yesterday said that it wanted to be carbon neutral by 2050, as it booked a profit of US$10.4 billion last year, up 18 percent from 2018. The company said that it aims for a 15 percent reduction in emissions by 2030 from 2018 levels and “net-zero emissions from our operations by 2050.” The target would cover its own operations, but not emissions from upstream or downstream activities. The firm said that it would spend approximately US$1 billion on “climate-related” projects over the next five years.
BEVERAGES
Diageo warns of profit loss
Diageo PLC yesterday said that the spread of COVID-19 in China and the Asia-Pacific region could knock up to US$260 million off its profit this year as bars and restaurants remain closed. The London-based company, whose brands include Johnnie Walker, said that the virus could affect its organic net sales and organic operating profit by between ￡225 million and ￡325 million (US$291.7 million and 421.4 million) and ￡140 million to ￡200 million respectively. It said that these ranges exclude any impact of the virus on any other markets.
MANUFACTURING
Firms look outside China
More than one-quarter of businesses grappling with COVID-19 in Asia say that they are setting up or using supply chains that reduce their reliance on China, a survey released yesterday by the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore showed. About 28 percent said that they were making such adjustments, and 14 percent said that they were shifting some or all of their supply chains outside of China, the poll conducted from Feb. 12 to Tuesday last week found. About two-thirds of members are US-based companies.
AIRLINES
Cathay staff take leave
More than 25,000 Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd (國泰航空) staff are taking unpaid leave amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Chief executive officer Augustus Tang (鄧健榮) said in an internal memo that challenges “remain acute,” and he thanked employees for their support. The Hong Kong-based airline this month asked its 33,000 workers to take three weeks off between Sunday and June 30. Most staff have taken the offer, but the acceptance rate is lower for pilots and cabin crew, a person familiar with the plan said.
INTERNET
Samsung site reveals info
Samsung Electronics Co on Tuesday said that a “technical error” caused its UK Web site to display other customers’ personal information. The company said that the error affected fewer than 150 customers on the site. People who logged on were able to see someone else’s name, phone number, address, e-mail address and previous orders. Samsung said that it did not leak card details.
TECHNOLOGY
Facebook buys game studio
Facebook Inc on Tuesday said that it has acquired development studio Sanzaru Games to join its Oculus gaming group. Sanzaru has produced a number of games, including Sonic the Hedgehog and Marvel Studios franchises, its Web site shows. The “vast majority” of Sanzaru’s nearly 100 employees would join Oculus, including the company’s founders, but would operate independently out of its existing offices, Facebook said. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
STATE SUBSIDIES: The talks over a factory in Dresden have a top end on par with what Japan is offering TSMC and outdo a cap other firms are being offered in Europe Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, is in talks to receive German government subsidies for as much as 50 percent of the costs to build a new semiconductor fab in the country, people familiar with the matter said. The government is in ongoing negotiations with TSMC, as well as its partners on the project — Bosch Ltd, NXP Semiconductors NV and Infineon Technologies AG — the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. No final decisions have been made and the final subsidy amount could still change. Any state aid must also
South Korea would avoid capitalizing on China’s ban on a US chipmaker, seeing the move by Beijing as an attempt to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, a person familiar with the situation said. The South Korean government would not encourage its memorychip firms to grab market share in China lost by Micron Technology Inc, which has been barred for use in critical industries by Beijing on national security grounds, the person said. China is the biggest market for South Korea semiconductor firms Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc and home to some of their factories. Their operations in China
GEOPOLITICAL RISKS: The company has a deep collaboration with TSMC, but it is also open to working with Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp, Nvidia’s CEO said Nvidia Corp, the world’s biggest artificial intelligence (AI) GPU supplier, yesterday said that it is diversifying its supply chain partners in order to enhance supply chain resilience amid geopolitical tensions. “All of our supply chain is designed for maximum diversity and redundancy so that we can have resilience. Our company is very big and so we have a lot of customers depending on us. And so our supply chain resilience is very important to us. We manufacture in as many places as we can,” Nvidia founder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said in response to a reporter’s question in
POWER FORWARD: The US company’s bullish revenue projection also lifted the shares of Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC and Japanese equipment supplier Advantest Nvidia Corp’s forecast for surging revenue surprised even the most bullish analysts on Wall Street, propelling the chipmaker to the cusp of a US$1 trillion market capitalization and igniting a global jump in stocks linked to artificial intelligence (AI). The Santa Clara, California-based company gained as much as 29 percent in extended US trading, on course for a record high, after saying it expects sales to reach about US$11 billion in the three months ending July. That gain puts Nvidia on track also to rack up the biggest one-day valuation jump in US company history. Nvidia, the biggest supplier of the advanced
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