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.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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