AUSTRALIAN
Jobs added beats forecast
The nation last month added almost four times as many jobs as forecast, as the economy’s recovery in areas where the COVID-19 pandemic is under control withstood Victoria’s renewed lockdown and concern about community spread. Employment surged by 114,700 from June, when it advanced an upwardly revised 228,400, compared with an expected gain of 30,000, data released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed. The jobless rate edged up to 7.5 percent, the highest since November 1998, as more people re-entered the labor force, pushing the participation rate to 64.7 percent from 64.1 percent in June.
SOCIAL MEDIA
TikTok Indian backer in talks
Chinese tech giant ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) is in early talks with Reliance Industries Ltd about investing in TikTok’s operations in India, TechCrunch reported yesterday, citing sources. The two companies began conversations late last month, but have not yet reached a deal, the report added. Reliance, ByteDance and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Indian government in June banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok and WeChat, for threatening its “sovereignty and integrity” after border tensions with China. Microsoft Corp has been in talks to acquire TikTok’s operations in the US. Twitter Inc has also expressed interest in closing a deal with TikTok, sources familiar with the matter said late last week.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
LONGi raises prices again
LONGi Green Energy Technology Co (隆基綠能科技), the world’s largest manufacturer of solar wafers, raised equipment prices for the third time in a month and said that it would keep boosting them if polysilicon costs continue to soar. The Xian, China-based firm increased prices of two types of monocrystalline wafers by about 7 percent each, it said on its Web site. Prices for the two types of wafers have gained by 24 percent and 23 percent since July 19, when an explosion at a polysilicon factory in the Xinjiang region cut global supply and prices of the raw material jumped. LONGi for the first time explicitly tied its wafer prices to polysilicon, saying that every time the raw material’s cost rises or falls by 3 yuan (US$0.43) per kilogram, its wafers would go up or down by 0.05 yuan per piece. Tongwei Co (通威), the largest maker of solar cells, has raised prices by more than 21 percent since the explosion.
TOURISM
TUI posts US$1.7bn net loss
The world’s largest tour operator, TUI, yesterday said that revenue has slumped to a huge loss in the third quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages the global travel sector. The German company, which has announced job cuts and store closures, posted a bottom-line net loss of 1.42 billion euros (US$1.68 billion) in the April-to-June period, down from a net profit of 22.8 million euros last year. TUI runs its business year from October to September, and in the nine months to June, TUI’s cumulative net loss amounted to 2.3 billion euros. In the third quarter alone, revenue plunged 98 percent to 71.8 million euros, as hotels, cruise ship and flight operations all but shut down because of global lockdowns. The company reopened about 55 hotels during the quarter, or about 15 percent of its portfolio. TUI expects to cover costs and break even at an operating level in the fourth quarter, it said, adding that bookings for summer next year were up 145 percent from those for this year.
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
MARKET SHIFTS: Exports to the US soared more than 120 percent to almost one quarter, while ASEAN has steadily increased to 18.5 percent on rising tech sales The proportion of Taiwan’s exports directed to China, including Hong Kong, declined by more than 12 percentage points last year compared with its peak in 2020, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday last week. The decrease reflects the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains, driven by escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington. Data compiled by the ministry showed China and Hong Kong accounted for 31.7 percent of Taiwan’s total outbound sales last year, a drop of 12.2 percentage points from a high of 43.9 percent in 2020. In addition to increasing trade conflicts between China and the US, the ministry said
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