PHARMACEUTICALS
Pfizer profits from vaccines
Selling vaccines during a pandemic has boosted Pfizer Inc’s bottom line and proven that a strategy it embarked upon more than a decade ago is now paying off handsomely. The New York-based pharmaceutical giant on Tuesday reported that it earned US$4.9 billion in the first three months of this year and it dramatically raised its profit forecast for the full year, thanks to strong demand for its COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer almost doubled its sales projections for the vaccine this year, from US$15 billion to about US$26 billion. The company, along with its German partner BioNTech AG, anticipate strong revenue from the vaccine and booster shots for the next three years. The partners expect to deliver about 2.5 billion vaccine doses this year, including 300 million doses for the US, and are prepping for what could become annual booster shots.
LOGISTICS
Maersk upbeat for this year
Maersk A/S yesterday said that it expects an “exceptionally strong” performance in the first quarter to continue for the rest of the year, driven by high demand for shipping containers from China to the US. “Strong demand led to bottlenecks, as well as lack of capacity and equipment, which drove up freight rates to record high levels,” CEO Soren Skou said in a statement. Those factors prompted Maersk last week to raise its outlook for full-year underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization to between US$13 billion and US$15 billion from US$8.5 billion and US$10.5 billion. It also lifted its forecast for global container demand growth to 5 to 7 percent from 3 to 5 percent. Maersk, the world’s biggest container shipper, confirmed the 30 percent rise in first-quarter revenue announced in a preliminary trading statement last week and reiterated its upbeat profit outlook for this year.
SEMICONDUCTORS
NXP sells US$2bn of bonds
NXP Semiconductors NV sold US$2 billion of bonds to help finance the development of semiconductors that reduce energy consumption in products like power adapters and electric vehicles. The chipmaker issued bonds in two parts, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified as the details are private. The longer portion of the deal, a 20-year security, yields 1.15 percentage points above US Treasuries, down from the initially targeted 1.5 percent premium, the person said. That equates to about 3.3 percent. The money would partly fund research and development for innovation in green chips, battery control and energy management for electric and hybrid vehicles, smart-building technologies, as well as energy-efficiency measures at its facilities, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
CRYPTOCURRENCY
Dogecoin surge crashes app
Investors are piling back into some of the fringe corners of the cryptocurrency world, with the frenzy sending dogecoin surging more than 50 percent again and crashing Robinhood Markets Inc’s trading app. Other so-called altcoins also took off, with dash spiking 18 percent over a 24-hour period through yesterday morning in Europe and ethereum classic rising almost 45 percent. In the world of decentralized finance, tokens such as force DAO and tierion surged more than 1,000 percent on Tuesday, CoinMarketCap.com data showed. Robinhood said it resolved earlier issues with crypto trading on its platform. The rallies defied easy explanation and continued a trend that has seen the value of all digital tokens surge past US$2.3 trillion.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San