ELECTRONICS
Panasonic boosts forecasts
Panasonic Corp yesterday revised its full-year forecasts upward, citing sales growth and cost-cutting efforts. For the 2020-2021 financial year, the firm now expects a ￥150 billion (US$1.4 billion) profit on sales of ￥6.6 trillion. Its previous forecasts were for ￥100 billion and ￥6.5 trillion respectively. The hikes reflect “recent growth in sales” and the “strengthening of our business structure,” Panasonic said in a statement. For the period from April to December last year, the company posted net profit of ￥130.14 billion, down 27 percent year-on-year, on sales of ￥4.87 trillion, which were down 15 percent.
ENERGY
Siemens to cut 7,800 jobs
German group Siemens Energy yesterday said that it would cut 7,800 jobs over the next four years to reduce costs in a rapidly changing global energy market. The measures are aimed at improving the company’s “competitiveness by enhancing the long-term cost structure,” Siemens said. In total, about one employee in 12 would be affected in a group that employs about 90,000 people. About 3,000 jobs would be eliminated in Germany, 1,700 in the US and 3,100 at other locations. About three-quarters of the cuts, planned by the end of the 2025 financial year, would be made in management, administration and sales, it said.
ENERGY
Russian economy shrinks
Russia on Monday said that its economy last year contracted 3.1 percent as the oil producing nation faced COVID-19 lockdowns and a plunge in global crude prices. However, the drop was less severe than Russian authorities had expected, with the Central Bank of Russia having forecast a contraction of about 4.0 percent. The Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) attributed the drop to “restrictions imposed to combat the coronavirus and the fall in global demand for energy resources.” The Russian economy’s largest losses were in the hospitality, transport, culture and sport sectors, Rosstat said.
PERSIAN GULF
S&P outlines recovery rate
The business cycle in Persian Gulf countries is likely to take “several quarters at least to fully recover” from twin shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the drop in oil prices, S&P Global Ratings said in a report. Corporate and infrastructure companies in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council are expected to operate “conservatively” this year as the economy recovers, the report said. “Absent a substantial recovery in revenue generation, they are likely to focus on cost optimization, proactively managing their liquidity, and preserving their cash lows, while new investments will continue to take a back seat in most sectors,” S&P credit analyst Timucin Engin wrote in a report.
AIRLINES
Philippine firm to cut jobs
Philippine Airlines yesterday said that it would cut 2,300 jobs, or about one-third of its workforce, by the middle of next month as it continues to take a beating amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “This has been an extremely difficult and painful decision,” company president Gilbert Santa Maria said in a statement. The job cuts, first announced in October last year, include voluntary and involuntary separations, the company said. Demand for air travel is “still far from pre-pandemic levels,” Philippine Air said, adding that it is operating less than 30 percent of pre-pandemic weekly flights.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
Taiwan’s exports soared 56 percent year-on-year to an all-time high of US$64.05 billion last month, propelled by surging global demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing and cloud service infrastructure, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) called the figure an unexpected upside surprise, citing a wave of technology orders from overseas customers alongside the usual year-end shopping season for technology products. Growth is likely to remain strong this month, she said, projecting a 40 percent to 45 percent expansion on an annual basis. The outperformance could prompt the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and
Two Chinese chipmakers are attracting strong retail investor demand, buoyed by industry peer Moore Threads Technology Co’s (摩爾線程) stellar debut. The retail portion of MetaX Integrated Circuits (Shanghai) Co’s (上海沐曦) upcoming initial public offering (IPO) was 2,986 times oversubscribed on Friday, according to a filing. Meanwhile, Beijing Onmicro Electronics Co (北京昂瑞微), which makes radio frequency chips, was 2,899 times oversubscribed on Friday, its filing showed. The bids coincided with Moore Threads’ trading debut, which surged 425 percent on Friday after raising 8 billion yuan (US$1.13 billion) on bets that the company could emerge as a viable local competitor to Nvidia
BARRIERS: Gudeng’s chairman said it was unlikely that the US could replicate Taiwan’s science parks in Arizona, given its strict immigration policies and cultural differences Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登), which supplies wafer pods to the world’s major semiconductor firms, yesterday said it is in no rush to set up production in the US due to high costs. The company supplies its customers through a warehouse in Arizona jointly operated by TSS Holdings Ltd (德鑫控股), a joint holding of Gudeng and 17 Taiwanese firms in the semiconductor supply chain, including specialty plastic compounds producer Nytex Composites Co (耐特) and automated material handling system supplier Symtek Automation Asia Co (迅得). While the company has long been exploring the feasibility of setting up production in the US to address
RSS