UNITED KINGDOM
Retail sales beat estimates
Retail sales rose more strongly than expected last month, helped by Black Friday discounts, early Christmas shopping and an absence of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions that closed many stores a year earlier. Retail sales rose 1.4 percent last month and were 4.7 percent higher than a year earlier, Office for National Statistics figures showed yesterday. Economists polled by Reuters had on average forecast that sales volumes would rise by 0.8 percent on the month and be 4.2 percent higher than a year earlier. Yesterday’s figures pre-date the spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the kingdom, which the Bank of England on Thursday said could lead to a rebound of demand for consumer goods — some of which are in short supply due to supply-chain difficulties.
AUTOMAKERS
European sales fall 20.5%
Europe’s automobile industry is facing a worse year, with sales falling a fifth straight month amid a global shortage of electronic chips used in new models. European sales fell 20.5 percent year-on-year to 713,346 units, the worst slump since 1993, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) said yesterday. Although economic activity bounced back relatively strongly in the first 11 months of the year compared with last year, auto sales on the continent stagnated, falling 0.04 percent. “The impact of the microchip shortage on vehicle output dragged the EU’s year-to-date sales performance into negative territory despite 2020’s record low base for comparison,” the ACEA said in a statement. German registrations dived 31.7 percent, while Italian and Polish sales were off by one-quarter. Sales also fell 12.3 percent in Spain, 17.1 percent in Belgium and 3.2 percent in France.
LOGISTICS
FedEx sales, profit soar
US courier giant FedEx on Thursday reported higher-than-expected turnover and profit, despite rising labor costs, and raised its earnings forecast for the year. The company’s turnover rose 14 percent to US$23.5 billion, compared with analysts’ estimates of US$22.47 billion. All the group’s sectors benefited from the growth surge, from the urgent delivery service of FedEx Express to the ordinary transport of mail and parcels in FedEx Ground. The company’s freight service showed the highest growth rates over the year, up 17.5 percent. However, a labor shortage caused disruptions, and raised labor and transport costs, the group said in a statement. Additional costs rose to about US$470 million compared with a year earlier.
AUTOMAKERS
Musk sells more shares
Elon Musk has sold more than three-quarters of the Tesla Inc shares he would need to offload to make good on a pledge to cut 10 percent of his stake in the company. In the second round of disposals this week, Musk sold 934,091 shares for more than US$884 million, according to regulatory filings dated on Thursday. The sales were to pay for taxes on the exercise of 2.2 million options. The world’s richest person has been on a selling spree since he asked his Twitter followers on Nov. 6 whether he should offload 10 percent of his Tesla stake, to which the majority answered “yes.” At the same time, he has been exercising options, something he had said he was likely to do toward the end of the year and had set up a trading plan for. Musk has now sold 12.9 million shares for US$13.6 billion, while exercising 17 million of the derivatives. The 10 percent threshold would represent about 17 million shares without taking into account the exercisable options.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”