CHINA
Q1 plunge of 9% forecast
China’s economy is set to post a 9 percent plunge in the first quarter from a year earlier, Goldman Sachs Group Inc said yesterday. A day after retail sales, industrial output and investment data plunged by far more than the median estimate of analysts, Goldman economists said that their new forecast for real GDP growth this year is 3 percent, down from 5.5 percent. The previous first-quarter forecast was for an expansion of 2.5 percent.
ENVIRONMENT
McDonald’s targets toys
McDonald’s Corp yesterday pledged to end the use of plastic found in toys served with children’s “Happy Meals” in the UK and Ireland by the beginning of next year. The plastic items would be replaced with a “soft toy, sustainable paper-based gifts or books,” the US fast-food giant said. “This represents the biggest reduction in plastic by McDonald’s UK and Ireland to date and is the next step in its mission to reduce its environmental impact across all areas of the business,” the company said in a statement.
RETAIL
Carphone to shut stores
British electricals retailer Dixons Carphone PLC is closing all of its 531 UK standalone Carphone Warehouse stores as part of a plan to turn around its mobile business, the company said yesterday. The stores, representing 8 percent of Dixons Carphone’s total UK selling space, are to close on April 3. The closures would result in 2,900 redundancies, with 1,800 other workers expected to take new roles internally.
RETAIL
Nordstrom revises forecast
Apparel retailer Nordstrom Inc on Monday withdrew its forecast for the current fiscal year and said that it would close stores in the US and Canada for two weeks, starting yesterday, in an effort to arrest the spread of COVID-19. The stores closing include Nordstrom full-line, Nordstrom Rack and Trunk Club clubhouses. It would provide pay and benefits to its store employees during the period, Nordstrom said.
AVIATION
S&P downgrades Boeing
S&P Global Ratings on Monday downgraded its rating for aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co. “Boeing’s cash flows for the next two years are going to be much weaker than we had expected, due to the 737 MAX grounding, resulting in worse credit ratios than we had forecast,” S&P said in a statement. “In addition, the significant reduction in global air travel due to the coronavirus will likely result in an increase in aircraft order deferrals, further pressuring cash flows.” It lowered its rating for the company to “BBB” from “A-.”
TECHNOLOGY
Huge French fine for Apple
The French Competition Authority on Monday slapped a record 1.1 billion euro (US$1.2 billion) fine on US tech giant Apple Inc for anti-competitive behavior toward its independent retail distributors. It found that Apple acted to prevent independent retailers in France from competing on price and abused its economic power over them, the agency said. Authority President Isabelle de Silva said that it was “the heaviest fine against a firm” as well as in any case, which also included two of Apple’s wholesalers in France who were hit with fines worth nearly 140 million euros.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to