TOURISM
Airbnb exits China
Airbnb Inc yesterday announced that it would stop representing short-term rental properties in China and focus its business in the nation on serving Chinese tourists looking for lodgings abroad. Airbnb joins a series of foreign Internet companies, including Yahoo Inc and eBay Inc, that have pulled out of China after running into fierce local competition and regulatory barriers. “We have made the difficult decision to refocus our efforts in China on outbound travel and suspend our homes and Experiences of Hosts in China, starting from July 30, 2022,” Airbnb China chief strategy officer Nathan Blecharczyk said in a statement on its social media account.
AUDITORS
KPMG, Sykes fined
The UK’s Financial Reporting Council has fined KPMG and its partner Anthony Sykes over its 2010 audit of Rolls-Royce Group PLC, the latest in a long list of audit scandals surrounding the firm. KPMG was ordered to pay £3.4 million (US$4.3 million), reduced from an original fine of £4.5 million because the firm admitted its shortcomings, the Financial Reporting Council said in a statement yesterday. An external independent expert is to assess the firm’s policies, guidance and procedures for audit work. Sykes must pay a sanction of £112,500, which was also reduced for admissions and early disposal from £150,000.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Snap lowers its forecasts
Snap Inc has cut its revenue and profit forecasts below the low end of its previous guidance, sending its shares plunging as much as 31 percent on Monday. The company is also to slow hiring, filling 500 roles before the end of the year, Snap chief executive officer Evan Spiegel said in a note to staff. “Like many companies, we continue to face rising inflation and interest rates, supply chain shortages and labor disruptions, platform policy changes, the impact of the war in Ukraine, and more,” he wrote in the memo. The company’s second-quarter forecast, for 20 to 25 percent year-on-year revenue growth, was already below analysts’ estimates.
AIRLINES
Carrier to issue new shares
Air France-KLM yesterday announced a bid to raise 2.26 billion euros (US$2.42 billion) by issuing new shares, as the debt-laden company seeks to put the COVID-19 crisis that has ravaged its finances behind it. The pandemic cost the Franco-Dutch airline about 11 billion euros over two years, after travel ground to a halt. The airline has about 7.7 billion euros of debt, despite massive bailouts by the French and Dutch governments, which own minority stakes in the former flag carriers that merged in 2004.
BANKING
UBS clients holding funds
UBS Group AG chief executive officer Ralph Hamers said the Swiss bank’s wealth clients are staying invested while holding back from putting new funds to work because of the uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis. Hamers expects greater clarity on the direction of markets within the next three months as the world comes to terms with the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the situation in China, as well as soaring energy prices and the Russian invasion, he said in a Bloomberg TV interview from Davos, Switzerland, yesterday. “We had to digest three major shocks: the pandemic shock, the war shock and the energy transition shock,” Hamers said.
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
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
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by