APPAREL
Uniqlo forecasts rebound
Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast Retailing Co, expects a stronger rebound in full-year operating profit driven by a solid performance in East Asian countries less affected by COVID-19 lockdowns, it said yesterday. The Japanese clothing empire forecast 2020-2021 operating profit of ￥255 billion (US$2.33 billion) — up slightly from its previous estimate of ￥245 billion. That marks a rise of 70.7 percent from the year before, when business began to be hit worldwide by the COVID-19 pandemic, with many shops forced to close for extended periods. In the first six months of this financial year, Fast Retailing logged a 0.5 percent dip in revenue year-on-year to ￥1,202.8 billion. Operating profit in the same period was up 22.9 percent from a year earlier at ￥167.9 billion.
E-COMMERCE
Amazon touts jobs in India
Amazon.com Inc has enabled exports of US$3 billion of India-made goods and created more than 1 million jobs since it began operating in the Asian nation, its country chief said yesterday. About 250,000 new sellers have joined Amazon since January last year and more than 50,000 offline retailers and neighborhood stores are selling on the platform, the e-commerce giant said in a statement. It helped create more than 300,000 direct and indirect jobs, and notched up US$1 billion of exports during the same period. “COVID-19 has made businesses realize they need to be more resilient, robust because there’s no notion of only offline or only online anymore,” Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal said in a telephone interview. “The Internet is like electricity, everybody will use it.”
AUTOMAKERS
BMW posts record deliveries
BMW AG yesterday joined rival Mercedes-Benz in reporting record first-quarter vehicle deliveries, driven largely by explosive demand in China. Both are also receiving big boosts from newly introduced plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles. Sales of BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce vehicles surged more than one-third to 636,606 in the quarter, the Munich-based manufacturer said in a statement. Deliveries in China almost doubled, and with the iX sports utility vehicle and i4 coupe rolling out over the course of the year, the company is on track to hand over more than 100,000 fully electric vehicles to customers this year. Mercedes brand sales rose 22 percent to 581,270, with Daimler AG’s main division posting a 60 percent rise in China deliveries. The company has received about 20,000 orders for the all-electric EQA compact and is to debut three other electric vehicles this year.
ITALY
Minister eyes protections
The government is considering extending state protection against foreign ownership to the automotive and steel sectors, in a bid to shield businesses from Chinese interest, a government minister said. Minister of Economic Development Giancarlo Giorgetti, of the Northern League party, told lawmakers in Rome that unfair competition by China — with strong state subsidies normally unavailable to Italian and European companies — has been underestimated. The result was many job losses and company closures in Europe, he said. “Some areas like the automotive and steel sectors are particularly in need of supportive measures because of their strategic character, and being particularly exposed to such competition,” Giorgetti said.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
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