COSMETICS
Shiseido discusses sale
Shiseido Co is in advanced talks to sell its shampoo and affordable skincare business to CVC Capital Partners for ￥150 billion to ￥200 billion (US$1.45 billion to US$1.93 billion), as the Japanese cosmetics maker shifts its focus to premium beauty products, people with knowledge of the matter said. The board of Shiseido is preparing to vote on the divestment soon, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is not public. The operations targeted for sale includes the company’s Tsubaki haircare products. The unit is mainly active in Japan, China and other parts of Asia. The lifestyle and personal care business represented about a 10th of Shiseido’s revenue in 2019, with annual sales of about ￥100 billion.
UNITED KINGDOM
Retail misses expectations
Retail sales rose less than expected last month, adding to evidence that a succession of lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic is dragging down the economy. Sales in shops and online edged up 0.3 percent after declining in November last year, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday. That is a percentage point less than economists had expected. Sales rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier. The report casts doubt about the resilience of the economy during a third round of restrictions that started this month. While the lockdowns might be distorting the seasonal adjustment of the figures, last month and the holiday shopping season are nevertheless crucial for retailers. Clothing sales rose sharply last month, while supermarkets and department stores declined. The drop in retail sales would knock 0.02 percentage point off overall output in the fourth quarter, the office said.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Cryptos won’t work: UBS
Cryptocurrencies might never be able to work as actual currencies, UBS Global Wealth Management (GWM) said. The “fundamental flaw” inherent in cryptocurrencies is that supply cannot be reduced when demand is slumping in most cases, UBS GWM chief economist Paul Donovan said in a video this week. That means they cannot be considered currencies, he said. A “proper currency,” as Donovan termed it, can be a stable store of value, providing certainty that it will be able to buy the same basket of goods tomorrow as it buys today. That confidence is derived from central banks’ ability to reduce supply when demand is falling. There is no such mechanism for switching off supply on most cryptocurrencies, and therefore their value can slide — leading to a collapse in spending power, he said.
AUTOMAKERS
Batteries give Nissan edge
Nissan Motor Co has emerged from Brexit with an edge over rivals that lack a UK battery supply chain, a big relief for the nation’s largest auto manufacturing plant. The maker of packs that power the Leaf electric vehicles built at Nissan’s massive factory in Sunderland, England, is to add production of a longer-range battery in the coming months, Nissan chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta said on Thursday. The supplier investment is the latest development for the Nissan facility, which employs about 6,000 people and faced existential risks without a Brexit trade agreement. However, CEO Carlos Tavares said that while good sense had prevailed with regard to Brexit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to ban gasoline and diesel cars from 2030 could be problematic.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
RSS