AVIATION
Mitsubishi ditches SpaceJet
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd has ended development of its SpaceJet aircraft — a domestic short-haul jet that was to supply local carriers including ANA Holdings Inc — after spending hundreds of millions of US dollars on the project. Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Heavy lacked the understanding and technological know-how for SpaceJet to materialize, chief executive officer Seiji Izumisawa said yesterday. Growing pressure to electrify and decarbonize, among other factors, forced the manufacturer to reassess its strategy, he added.
ENERGY
BP reports net loss
BP PLC slid into a net loss last year after its exit from Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the British energy giant announced yesterday, despite a surge in oil prices. The company posted annual losses after tax totaling US$2.5 billion, compared with net profit of US$7.6 billion in 2021. Excluding the exceptional hit, profit more than doubled to US$27.7 billion on soaring oil and gas prices, mirroring huge earnings last year by BP rivals such as Shell PLC and Exxon Mobile Corp. BP said its fourth-quarter dividend would rise 10 percent, and announced a fresh buyback totaling US$2.75 billion.
GAMING
Nintendo drops profit outlook
Nintendo Co yesterday cut its full-year net profit forecast, saying the global chip shortage and other supply chain problems had hit console sales in the nine months to December last year. The Japanese gaming giant also trimmed the annual hardware sales forecast for its Switch console to 18 million units from a previous target of 19 million. New games such as Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and Splatoon 3 have performed well, the Kyoto-based company said. However, hardware sales by unit declined 21 percent year-on-year in the April-to-December period, “mainly due to a shortage of semiconductors and other component supplies that impacted production until around late summer,” Nintendo said.
BREWERS
Carlsberg expects hard year
Danish brewer Carlsberg A/S said yesterday that this year would be another “challenging year” as it reported increased revenues ,but swung to a net loss owing to its exit from Russia. Revenue for the global beermaker came in at 70.26 billion kroner (US$10.1 billion) for last year, up 16.9 percent from a year earlier, the company said in its earnings report. Carlsberg reported a net loss of 1.06 billion kroner for the year, which was affected by writedowns of 10.74 billion kroner. The company earned a net profit of 6.85 billion kroner in 2021.
BANKING
BNP plans share buyback
BNP Paribas SA plans to buy back 5 billion euros (US$5.4 billion) of shares after the sale of its US unit, and raised its profitability targets as traders posted a quarter that beat many Wall Street peers. The Paris-based bank is set to distribute about 4 billion euros related to the sale of Bank of the West and 962 million euros as part of its ordinary shareholder return policy in two tranches this year, it said in a statement yesterday. For the fourth quarter, the bank posted net income of 2.15 billion euros, lower than estimates and down almost 7 percent from the same period a year earlier as expenses rose. Still, revenue from trading debt securities surged 45 percent, ahead of the Wall Street average.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six