The U.S. has raised tariffs on Chinese goods and has been ridiculed by industry groups. BYD unveiled a new model overseas for the first time. Honda is recruiting voluntary resignations from its regular employees in China. FII expects AI servers to account for 40% of the global market share. Foxconn, Cisco, Mitsubishi Chemical, Merck KGaA, Burberry and ZTO Express announced their results. U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday raised tariffs on a range of Chinese-made goods, including electric vehicles, semiconductors, steel, aluminum and medical products. U.S. importers say the tariffs will increase supply chain costs, leading to higher consumer prices. Industry groups representing U.S. importers have scoffed Biden at raising tariffs on a range of imports from China, saying they will increase supply chain costs and lead to higher consumer prices. The head of the Retail Industry Leaders Association said that the widespread tariffs are not strategic and will hinder U.S. economic growth.
The head of Great Wall Motor's overseas business hit back at Western criticism of China's industrial policy, saying that criticism of China's overcapacity was "not accepted". An executive at one of China's largest private automakers said overcapacity in China's auto industry was a "false proposition."
BYD unveiled its first pickup truck, the SHARK, in Mexico on May 14. BYD said that this is the first time that BYD has unveiled a new model overseas, and that it plans to expand sales in South America and Southeast Asia after launching it in Mexico. BYD is considering establishing its first production base in Central America in Mexico. The plug-in hybrid (PHV) version of this car has a range of 840 kilometers and accelerates to 100 kilometers in about 5.7 seconds.
Due to sluggish sales in China, Honda has begun to solicit voluntary leavers from its local full-time employees. About 1,700 employees are employed in the production business at the plant, accounting for 14% of the total number of local joint ventures. Guangqi Honda, a joint venture between Honda and Guangzhou Automobile Group, began soliciting voluntary leavers in May. Honda's FY 2024 sales in China are planned to be 1.06 million units, down 13% from the previous year and 4% from FY 2020, which set a record high. With sales sluggish, Honda is expected to reduce the number of factory days operating in June.
Volkswagen Group is exploring the sale of a €1 billion stake in Traton, a division of heavy-duty truck manufacturers. Volkswagen's possible sale of 1 billion euros in shares is equivalent to nearly 6 percent of Traton's shares. Depending on market conditions, Volkswagen's share sale could be between 500 million euros and 1 billion euros. Traton manufactures trucks and buses under the Scania, MAN, Navistar and Volkswagen brands. Previously, the company's core earnings in the first quarter were very strong as demand for commercial vehicles was unleashed after the pandemic ended.
OpenAI Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever is leaving the artificial intelligence (AI) company. He voted to remove CEO Sam Altman about six months ago, but said a few days later he regretted the move. Sutskever and OpenAI's current leaders praised each other when they announced the news on Tuesday, but the move suggests that Altman's brief ouster last November is still having an impact on OpenAI's leadership. Since then, OpenAI has replaced almost all of its directors and said it will strengthen governance.
Google's parent company, Alphabet, has unveiled an AI-powered agent that can answer real-time queries for video, audio and text as part of a series of moves by the company to showcase its prowess in the AI space and quell criticism that it is lagging behind its competitors. At Tuesday's annual developer conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai showed off the Silicon Valley giant's new "multimodal" AI assistant called Project Astra, powered by its upgraded Gemini model.
Google will expand the use of this technology by presenting answers provided by artificial intelligence (AI) to billions of Google search engine users by the end of the year. Currently, Google is trying to fend off the increasing competition that its core business faces. Google will launch the move in the U.S. this week, signaling the company's greater embrace of generative AI; This kind of computer program can create smooth text and other types of media content.
Meta Platforms is shutting down its business communication platform, Workplace, to prioritize artificial intelligence and other investments. A Meta spokesperson said the company stopped operating the product to focus on building artificial intelligence and metaverse technology, and believes it will reshape the way work is done. Workvivo, a Zoom company, has been named as a preferred migration partner.
Amazon Web Services company AWS said on Wednesday that it plans to invest 7.8 billion euros in Germany by 2040 to build cloud computing infrastructure specifically for Europe. The new investment will create an average of 2,800 full-time jobs per year for local companies in Germany. AWS announced last year plans to store data on servers located in the European Union to protect data privacy for customers in government and highly regulated industries. By the end of 2025, the company said it will launch several data centers in the German state of Brandenburg, which will be open to all customers.
Zheng Hongmeng, chairman of FII, said that AI is expected to contribute 40% of the company's total cloud computing revenue in 2024, and AI servers will account for 40% of the global market share. In the first quarter of this year, the cloud computing business of FII accounted for nearly half of the total business, a new high in a single quarter. The company's AI servers accounted for nearly 40% of the overall revenue of the cloud computing segment, with a year-on-year increase of nearly two times and a quarter-on-quarter growth of nearly double-digit ratio. The company's generative AI servers nearly tripled year-over-year and showed double-digit growth sequentially.
Tencent and Alibaba, two Chinese tech companies, reported single-digit year-over-year revenue growth in the first quarter of this year, slightly above analysts' average expectations, but a sharp slowdown from a few years ago. Tencent, China's most valuable publicly traded company, surged more than 60 percent in quarterly profits. The internet conglomerate is focusing more on higher-margin businesses such as advertising and e-commerce.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said the media giant plans to "substantially" reduce investments in linear TV to make its streaming division a consistently profitable one. Mr. Iger said Wednesday that the company's analysis determined that cable "is not going to be a growth business, but it could be an important part of our ability to attract consumers." ”
HYBE, the agency that owns BTS, has become one of the largest conglomerates in South Korea, creating a precedent in the entertainment industry. The total amount of assets disclosed exceeded 5 trillion won, reaching 5.25 trillion won, and it was designated as a corporate group that should disclose corporate information for the first time. There are a total of 88 large conglomerates in Korea with total assets of more than 5 trillion won, and the top 10 groups in terms of assets are Samsung, SK, Hyundai Motor, LG, POSCO, Lotte, Hanwha, HD Hyundai, GS, and Nonghyup.
The U.S. Department of Justice says Boeing violated a settlement agreement reached three years ago over the roles of its employees in two fatal crashes, leaving the company potentially subject to criminal prosecution for one of the biggest crises in its history. Boeing admitted in January 2021 that two of its employees had misled federal aviation safety regulators about certain aspects of the 737 MAX aircraft, but Boeing avoided prosecution by signing a deferred prosecution agreement at the time. Now, prosecutors say the company has failed to meet its obligations promised in the $2.5 billion settlement.
Vanguard has appointed BlackRock veteran Salim Ramji as its next CEO. He will succeed Tim Buckley as the first outside person to take the helm of the company. Ramji will join Vanguard in July. He was responsible for exchange-traded funds and indices at BlackRock, Vanguard's biggest competitor. Vanguard was founded nearly half a century ago and had about $9.3 trillion in assets under management at the end of March. In February, Vanguard announced that Buckley, a 30-year veteran of Vanguard who has served as CEO since 2018, plans to retire by the end of the year.
Brazilian President Lula has fired Petrobras CEO Jean Paul Prates, and former head of the National Petroleum Administration, Magda Chambryat, will take over. Prates expressed its willingness to resign.
Sany Group announced on May 15 that according to the rotating chairman system of the group, the board of directors decided that Xiang Wenbo will serve as the chairman of the group from May 16, 2024 to May 15, 2025.
Financial Reporting Information
ZTO Express announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter of 2024. Quarterly revenue was RMB9.96 billion (US$1.379 billion), up 10.9% from RMB8.983 billion in the same period in 2023. Net profit was RMB1,448 million, down 13.0% from RMB1,665 million in the same period of 2023. Adjusted net profit was RMB2,224.00 billion, up 15.8% from RMB1,920 billion in the same period of 2023.
Foxconn Technology Group announced a large profit increase in the first quarter of 2024. The world's largest electronics contract manufacturer, known for assembling Apple's iPhones, saw a 72% year-on-year increase in quarterly net profit of NT$22.01 billion. Operating income for the quarter was NT$1,324.0 billion, compared to NT$1,462.4 billion in the same period last year, down 9% year-on-year. Operating profit was NT$36.751 billion, compared to NT$40.523 billion in the same period last year, down 9% year-on-year.
Mitsubishi Chemical Group announced results for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024. Sales revenue for the fiscal year was 4,387.2 billion yen, compared to 4,634.5 billion yen in the previous year. Operating profit for the full year was 261.8 billion yen, compared to 182.7 billion yen in the previous year. Net income attributable to owners of the parent company for the full year was 119.6 billion yen, compared to 96.5 billion yen in the previous year.
German pharmaceutical and chemical giant Merck Group has announced its results for the first quarter of 2024. Net sales for the quarter were 5.12 billion euros, compared to 5.293 billion euros in the prior-year quarter. EBITDA profit for the quarter was 1,385 million euros, compared to 1,491 million euros in the prior-year quarter. Profit after tax for the quarter was 699 million euros, compared to 800 million euros in the prior-year quarter. Among them, the net sales of life sciences business were 2.144 billion euros, the net sales of pharmaceutical and health business were 2.048 billion euros, and the net sales of electronic technology business were 928 million euros.
British luxury brand Burberry announced preliminary results for the 2024 fiscal year ended March 30, 2024, with revenue of 2.968 billion pounds, down about 4% year-on-year at constant exchange rates; Adjusted operating profit was £418 million, down approximately 34% year-on-year. Comparable store sales declined 1% year-on-year during the period, with a strong growth of 10% in the first half and an 8% decline in the second half.
Cisco announced results for its fiscal third quarter ended April 27, 2024. Total revenue for the quarter was $12.702 billion, compared with $14.571 billion in the same period last year, down 13% year-on-year. Among them, product revenue was 9.024 billion US dollars, and service revenue was 3.678 billion US dollars. Quarterly net profit was $1.886 billion, compared with $3.212 billion in the same period last year, down 41% year-on-year.
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