SINGAPORE
Home sales continue to rise
Home sales last month rose for a third straight month as the city recovered from COVID-19 lockdowns, but a prolonged recession threatens to halt a property market recovery. The number of new units sold rose 8 percent to 1,080 from 998 in June, according to Urban Redevelopment Authority data released yesterday. That is the most since November, and up from a near six-year low in April during the height of the lockdown. With the city-state heading for its worst recession on record, a recovery in the property market could be slowed depending on how quickly the broader economy can pick up. The government forecasts the economy would shrink between 5 and 7 percent this year.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Microsoft eyes TikTok UK
Microsoft Corp is interested in buying the popular music video app TikTok’s UK operations, expanding beyond the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand units that are already under discussion, Fox Business Network reported, citing a banker it did not identify. It is unclear whether TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) wants to sell the UK unit and if a formal offer for UK unit will be made, the banker with knowledge of the deal told the network. TikTok is sitting on a plan to move its headquarters from the US to London as it waits for a public statement of support from the British government, the South China Morning Post reported last week.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Sanofi to buy US group
French pharma giant Sanofi SA yesterday said it would buy US group Principia Biopharma Inc for US$3.68 billion in a deal that would boost its research and development into autoimmune and allergic diseases. The deal would see Sanofi “acquire all of the outstanding shares of Principia for [US]$100 per share in cash, which represents an aggregate equity value of approximately [US]$3.68 billion,” Sanofi said in a statement. The French company said it aims to complete the acquisition between October and December.
UNITED KINGDOM
Homes sold at record level
Britons bought and sold a record number of homes between the middle of last month and early this month as pent-up demand from the COVID-19 lockdown and a desire to leave London bucked the usual summer slowdown, industry data showed yesterday. Property Web site Rightmove reported the highest number of home sales agreed since it began tracking the data more than 10 years ago, with transactions more than 20 percent higher than the previous record. Average asking prices for this month — based on data collected from July 12 to Aug. 8 — were 4.6 percent higher than a year earlier, as the normal summer softening in demand failed to materialize.
AUSTRALIA
Tech retailers post profits
Two of the nation’s biggest tech-focused retailers yesterday posted record annual profits and raised dividends as a COVID-19-driven shift to working from home prompted a frenzy of purchases of computers, screens and other home goods. No. 1 electronics retailer JB Hi-Fi Ltd said underlying profit jumped by a third to A$332.7 million (US$239 million) in the year to end-June, rocketing past a pre-pandemic forecast of A$265 million to A$270 million. It raised its final dividend by three-quarters. Amazon.com Inc peer Kogan.com Ltd’s net profit for the period leaped 56 percent, and the payout to shareholders hoisted by two-thirds.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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