Sat, May 22, 2021 page10

• World Business Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  SEMICONDUCTORS

  Chip machine maker bullish

  Applied Materials Inc gave a bullish forecast for this quarter, boosted by orders from chipmakers rushing to add capacity to meet a flood of demand for their products. Revenue would be about US$5.92 billion in the three-month period ending in July, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement on Thursday. Analysts, on average, estimated US$5.52 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. Profit, minus certain items, would be US$1.70 to US$1.82 per share in the fiscal third quarter, the biggest maker of machinery used to produce semiconductors said. That compares with an average estimate of US$1.56. Applied Materials expects the total market for chip factory equipment to grow up to US$70 billion this year. That would further expand next year to bring the two-year total to more than US$160 billion, the company projected.

  SOUTH KOREA

  Exports surge in first 20 days

  As vaccinations allow a broader reopening of major economies, exports gained 53.3 percent in the first 20 days of the month from a year earlier, Korea Customs Service reported yesterday. Average daily shipments increased 59.1 percent in the period, which had half a business day less than a year earlier. The readings were partly boosted by last year’s deep slump, when the COVID-19 pandemic hobbled global trade. As the world seeks a return to normalcy, the nation is seeing a rise in demand for export products beyond its cash cow — memory chips — with sales also growing in vehicles, wireless devices and machinery. Exports to China, its largest overseas market, rose 25.2 percent from May 1 to 20 from a year earlier. Shipments to the US jumped 87.3 percent, while those to the EU and Japan rose 78.1 percent and 30.6 percent respectively.

  PORTUGAL

  Tourism driving economy

  The nation is likely to raise its GDP growth forecast for this year to close to 5 percent as tourists help boost the recovery and Europe’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign advances. The government sees GDP expanding as much as 1 percentage point more than the 4 percent it forecast last month, Minister of Finance Joao Leao said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Lisbon. “We’re actually very optimistic.”The economy shrank 7.6 percent last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the tourism industry and other businesses, the biggest annual contraction since at least 1960. For the nation, which has the third-highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the eurozone, tourism represents about 15 percent of the economy and 9 percent of employment.

  CHINA

  Millionaires set to double

  China would more than double the number of millionaires in the next five years and boost the size of the middle class by almost half, spurring consumption in the economy, HSBC Holdings PLC said. The number of high-net-worth individuals — those with the equivalent of at least 10 million yuan (US$1.56 million) in investable assets — is likely to increase from more than 2 million to 5 million by 2025, it said. The middle class, which numbers about 340 million now based on the narrowest definition, would grow by more than 45 percent to more than 500 million in the period, it said. “An expanding middle class will underpin medium to long-term economic growth, and stronger consumer spending boosts domestic demand, business confidence, and capital expenditure,” HSBC economists led by Qu Hongbin (屈宏斌) wrote in a note yesterday.
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