AIRLINES
Virgin sees delayed recovery
Britain’s Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd said it would not return to profitability until next year, pushing back its previous forecast of a recovery this year, as a weaker pound, rising costs and higher interest rates offset strong demand for travel. For last year, Virgin Atlantic posted a pretax loss of ￡206 million (US$260 million) on revenue of ￡2.9 billion, recovering to 98 percent of levels last seen in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut travel markets. Virgin, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, said that summer bookings were ahead of expectations.
TRANSPORTATION
Alstom losses narrow
French train maker Alstom SA narrowed its losses in its 2022-2023 fiscal year, but delayed its profitability target due to high inflation, the company said yesterday. The maker of TGV high-speed trains reported a loss of 132 million euros (US$144.6 million) between April last year and March this year in the wake of its acquisition of the rail division of Canadian group Bombardier Inc. Alstom delayed its mid-term target for a key measure of profitability — adjusted earnings before interest and taxes — by a year to 2025-2026, citing the “new macroeconomic environment in particular the effect of inflation.”
RETAIL
ASOS first-half loss widens
Asos PLC sales fell and its loss grew in the first half, as the British online retailer tried to cut inventory and excessive discounting. Sales dropped 8 percent in the six months through February and operating losses widened to ￡272.5 million, it said yesterday. Chief executive officer Jose Antonio Ramos Calamonte said the business has made progress in its turnaround, despite “some very challenging conditions.” Meanwhile, supermarket group Ahold Delhaize NV beat expectations with its first-quarter sales, thanks to a strong performance in the US and loyalty programs, it said yesterday. The Netherlands-headquartered company announced quarterly sales of 21.62 billion euros, beating the 21.5 billion euros expected by analysts.
FINANCE
Latitude under investigation
The privacy regulators for Australia and New Zealand yesterday said they had begun a joint investigation into the personal information handling practices at consumer finance firm Latitude Group, which was hit by a cyberattack. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the New Zealand Office of the Privacy Commissioner said the decision followed preliminary inquiries into the matter by both regulators. Latitude Group, a provider of credit cards and personal loans for some of Australia’s biggest retailers, in March said that hackers stole nearly 8 million Australian and New Zealand drivers’ license numbers.
LODGING
Airbnb cautious on outlook
Vacation home-rental company Airbnb Inc on Tuesday gave a cautious forecast for revenue in the second quarter, suggesting rising prices and a murky economic outlook are beginning to weigh on consumer appetite for trips. The San Francisco-based home-sharing company expects revenue of US$2.35 billion to US$2.45 billion in the three months ending in June, representing an increase of 12 to 16 percent from a year earlier and its slowest pace of growth yet. Airbnb said it expects earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, excluding some costs, to be similar to the second quarter last year.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
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