AIRLINES
Chinese carriers post losses
Chinese airlines reported a total loss of 20.96 billion yuan (US$3 billion) for last month as the COVID-19 outbreak spread and hit travel demand, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said yesterday. China’s overall aviation industry recorded a loss of 24.59 billion yuan for the month, Zhang Qing, an official with the aviation regulator, told a news conference. The total number of airline passengers last month fell 84.5 percent year-on-year to 8.34 million, the regulator said.
BEVERAGES
Pepsi to buy Rockstar
PepsiCo Inc on Wednesday said it is buying energy drink maker Rockstar Energy Beverages for US$3.85 billion. The acquisition would expand PepsiCo’s portfolio of energy drinks, which already includes Mountain Dew’s Kickstart, GameFuel and AMP. Rockstar, founded in 2001, makes 30 variations of drinks and is sold in more than 30 countries. PepsiCo and Rockstar have had a distribution agreement in North America since 2009. The deal is targeted to close in the first half of the year.
TELECOMS
AG backs off T-Mobile deal
California’s attorney general on Wednesday said that the state would not appeal a judge’s decision approving T-Mobile Inc’s US$26.5 billion purchase of Sprint Corp. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of 14 state attorneys general who sued to stop the deal. They had argued that eliminating a major wireless company would harm consumers by reducing competition and adding billions of US dollars in costs through higher phone bills. The merger has been approved by the US Department of Justice and the US Federal Communications Commission.
AIRLINES
Lufthansa cancels flights
German airline Deutsche Lufthansa AG on Wednesday said that it would cancel 23,000 flights across the group, a 50 percent reduction, as it tries to deal with the fallout from COVID-19. “Due to the exceptional circumstances caused by the spread of the virus,” Lufthansa said that it would scrap the flights between March 29 and April 24, with more “expected in the coming weeks.” Previously, Lufthansa had detailed 7,100 cancelations up to the end of its winter flight plan on March 28.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla adjusts sales forecast
Tesla Inc would probably sell about 10 percent fewer vehicles this year than previously expected as the coronavirus outbreak weighs on demand, Morgan Stanley said. The bank slashed its sales target this year for Tesla to deliver 452,000 vehicles from the previous estimate of 500,000, a note to clients said yesterday. Tesla’s volumes would probably drop about 10 percent in Europe this year, hurt by the coronavirus and softening of incentives in markets such as Norway and the Netherlands, the bank said.
RETAIL
Best Buy chairman to leave
Hubert Joly, who engineered Best Buy Co’s successful turnaround after arriving in 2012, is to step down as executive chairman, the company said in a statement. Lead director Patrick Doyle would replace Joly as chairman after the company’s shareholders’ meeting on June 11. The electronics retailer has an agreement with Joly for him to serve as a consultant to the company for a year, with an option for the arrangement to be renewed. He would be considered an independent contractor.
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).