REAL ESTATE
Evergrande’s ratings down
Moody’s Investors Service on Wednesday lowered China Evergrande Group’s (恒大集團) credit rating by one notch to “B2,” the second downgrade by a global ratings company in less than two weeks. “Although Evergrande has been reducing its debt to improve its financial stability, the company still faces sizeable maturing debt and puttable bonds over the next 12 to 18 months,” Moody’s said. The Shenzhen-based developer said it has reduced its net debt-to-equity ratio to below 100 percent, and pared total borrowings to about 570 billion yuan (US$88.2 billion) from 717 billion yuan in December last year.
SINGAPORE
Housing boom eases
A housing boom took a breather last quarter, after a return to lockdown conditions amid a COVID-19 outbreak eased price growth. Private property values rose 0.9 percent sequentially from the previous quarter, when they rose 3.3 percent, preliminary estimates from the Urban Redevelopment Authority showed yesterday. It was the first time price growth slowed in five quarters. Fewer property launches also caused prices to slow, said Christine Sun (孫燕清), senior vice president of research and analytics at OrangeTee & Tie (橙易產業).
SWEDEN
Central bank keeps policies
The central bank yesterday kept its policy unchanged and said that the economy still needed support even as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic fade. “The Executive Board has therefore decided to hold the repo rate unchanged at zero percent, and that during the fourth quarter the Riksbank will continue purchasing assets within the envelope” of 700 billion kronor (US$81.62 billion), it said in a statement. The Riksbank sees the economy growing 4.2 percent this year, as inflation is above the 2 percent target and housing prices have soared.
AUTOMAKERS
Ford curtails production
Ford Motor Co is halting production for two weeks at a Michigan factory that just began building its highly anticipated Bronco SUV, citing a lack of unspecified parts. The automaker is also curtailing production at eight additional factories this month and next month due to a global shortage of semiconductors that has hobbled auto production worldwide. Ford said it is diverting its scarce semiconductor supply to finish nearly completed vehicles that are awaiting chips before being sent to dealers.
FOOD
Krispy Kreme IPO falls short
Krispy Kreme Inc on Wednesday priced its US initial public offering (IPO) below a marketed range to raise US$500 million, short of the US$640 million it had sought. The company said in a statement that it sold more than 29 million shares for US$17 each. While the size of the sale was expanded from the almost 27 million shares that Krispy Kreme had planned to sell, the offer price was well below the US$21 to US$24 marketed range. Krispy Kreme is valued in the listing at about US$2.78 billion.
TECHNOLOGY
Russia tightens IT rules
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law obliging foreign information technology (IT) firms to open offices on Russian territory, a document published yesterday by the government showed. Moscow has fined IT firms for failing to delete content it says is illegal, slowing down the speed of Twitter as punishment, and on Wednesday opened a new case against Google for breaching personal data legislation.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
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