SEMICONDUCTORS
Micron to cut executives’ pay
Micron Technology Inc is cutting executives’ salaries by as much as 20 percent and suspending bonuses as the chipmaker copes with a slump in the industry. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra’s salary is to be reduced by one-fifth, with executive vice presidents getting a 15 percent cut, the firm said in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Senior vice presidents are to have their salaries reduced 10 percent, and bonuses would be suspended for all named executive officers. The move follows a plan to cut jobs at Micron by 10 percent. The Boise, Idaho-based company is contending with sluggish demand for memory chips as part of a slowdown in sales of personal computers and other devices. The move is to slash executives’ target cash compensation by 53 percent to 75 percent, Micron said. Mehrotra last year had a base salary of US$1.41 million, but most of his total US$28.8 million in compensation came from stock awards.
MALAYSIA
Pent-up demand boosts GDP
The economy grew at the quickest pace in more than two decades last year, as pent-up demand helped it become the fastest-growing economy in Asia, even if the title is likely to be short-lived. GDP rose 8.7 percent last year, the highest level since 2000, Department of Statistics data showed. That compares with the median estimate of 8.6 percent year-on-year growth in a Bloomberg survey and aligns with official expectations. Last quarter, the economy grew a better-than-expected 7 percent from a year earlier, helped by domestic demand. However, the data showed that the economy contracted 2.6 percent from the previous quarter — a performance that authorities attributed to waning support from stimulus measures.
SEMICONDUCTORS
AMD gains CPU market share
Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMC) has captured nearly one-third of the market for CPUs, while British chip technology firm Arm Ltd’s rise in the PC market slowed last quarter, an analyst report said. AMD has grabbed share away from Intel Corp, which still remains the largest player in the market for what are known as x86 processors, which work with popular operating systems such as Microsoft Corp’s Windows. In the fourth quarter of last year, Intel had 68.7 percent market share for x86 processors, while AMD had 31.3 percent, up from 28.5 percent a year earlier, Mercury Research said. However, the PC chip market posted its worst downturn since the 1980s and possibly the worst in the industry’s history, Mercury Research president Dean McCarron said in the report.
TECHNOLOGY
PayPal growth loses steam
PayPal Holdings Inc’s volume growth on its platforms slowed even faster than expected in the final three months of last year, in yet another sign that consumer spending continued to stumble even during the normally busy holiday season. PayPal CEO Dan Schulman is planning to retire at the end of this year, the company said. Total payments volume climbed 9 percent to US$357.4 billion, missing the US$365.4 billion average estimate of 23 analysts compiled by Bloomberg. Still, the company has set its sights on trimming costs and said adjusted profit per share for last year would climb 18 percent to US$4.87, exceeding the US$4.75 analysts expect. Schulman has vowed to improve operating leverage, or the ability to grow revenue faster than expenses. On Thursday, PayPal said it would record US$100 million in charges tied to restructuring this quarter.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS