The U.S. and Taiwan launched a bilateral “initiative” on 21st century trade that’s intended “to develop concrete ways to deepen” their economic and trade relationship and advance their “mutual trade priorities based on shared values,” said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Wednesday. The U.S. and Taiwan “are market-oriented economies and understand the harm that can be caused by trade partners that deploy non-market policies and practices,” said USTR in a veiled reference to China. “Both sides believe in building consumer trust in the digital economy, promoting access to information, facilitating use of digital technologies, promoting resilient and secure digital infrastructure, and addressing discriminatory and trade-distortive practices in the digital economy.” News of the collaboration likely won’t sit well with Beijing, which warned the U.S. Tuesday to “immediately stop official exchanges with Taiwan in any form.” The Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry didn’t comment about Wednesday’s U.S.-Taiwan announcement.
Best Buy Health violates the Americans With Disabilities Act for its failure to design and operate a website that’s “fully accessible” to blind or visually impaired people who use screen-reading software, alleged a complaint Sunday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that seeks class-action status. Legally blind Bronx resident Isabel Taveras tried in April to use Best Buy Health’s Lively.com website, which sells inexpensive cellphones and medical alert services to seniors, said her complaint, one of a dozen she filed simultaneously against a variety of merchants, all alleging the same ADA violations. She found the NonVisual Desktop Access screen reader she used was incapable of reading the links on the website’s promotional images or its item description links, said the complaint. “For screen-reading software to function, the information on a website must be capable of being rendered into text,” it said. If not, the blind or visually impaired user “is unable to access the same content available to sighted users,” it said. Taveras encountered “multiple access barriers” that denied her “full and equal access” to the goods and services offered on the website to “the general public,” it said. The deficiencies were still there through the date of the complaint's filing, it said.The complaint seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions ordering Best Buy “to take all the steps necessary to make its website fully comply" with the ADA's requirements, plus statutory and punitive money damages. It defines the potential class as including all blind and visually impaired people in the U.S. who have tried and failed to access the Lively.com goods and services that are available to the general public. Best Buy didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Consumer intentions on buying new TV sets increased slightly in May compared with April, according to preliminary data reported Tuesday by the Conference Board. Analytics company Toluna canvassed 3,000 U.S. homes for the board through May 23, finding 11.6% plan to buy a new TV set in the next six months, up from 11.3% in April, 11% in March and 11.3% in May 2021, it said. Consumer confidence fell slightly in May, after rising modestly in April, due to “a perceived softening in labor market conditions,” said the board. Consumers don’t foresee the economy “picking up steam in the months ahead,” but they do expect labor market conditions to remain relatively strong, “which should continue to support confidence in the short run,” it said.
Dell Technologies endured a “wide range” of semiconductor shortages that affected results in its fiscal Q1 ended April 29, said co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke on an earnings call Thursday. Dell nevertheless generated 16% year-over-year revenue growth in the quarter to a record $26.12 billion, he said.
Lionsgate is engaged in a “robust and productive process” with its bankers and “a number of potential strategic and financial partners” to spin off Starz as a stand-alone company, said CEO Jon Feltheimer on an earnings call Thursday for its fiscal Q4 ended March 31. “We're targeting an announcement of our plan by the end of the summer and expect a transaction could close as early as our fiscal fourth quarter,” he said.
Revenue in Marvell Technology’s consumer end market was $178.5 million in its fiscal Q1 ended April 30, growing 7% year over year, said CEO Matt Murphy on a quarterly earnings call Thursday. Robust demand for solid-state-drive controllers is driving the growth in Marvell’s consumer segment, “partially offset” by declines in its PC hard-drive business, he said. Revenue in Marvell’s consumer market declined 4% sequentially from Q4, “below our forecast for a flattish outlook, due to a reduction in demand” for PC hard drives, he said. “While we are not the bellwether of global PC demand as it represents a relatively small amount of our revenue, we did see a rapid change in tone from the PC market, and we expect the weakness to continue,” he said. From Marvell’s “perspective,” the shift from hard drives to solid-state drives in the notebook PC market is “almost complete,” he said. Q1 revenue in Marvell’s carrier infrastructure end market, including 5G, was $252 million, up 5% sequentially and 50% year over year, said Murphy. That was on top of a “sequential step-up” of more than 30% in Marvell’s 5G business in its fiscal Q4, he said. “The growth in 5G deployments, combined with Marvell product ramps at multiple base station customers, continues to fuel strong growth in this end market.” Revenue in the carrier end market for fiscal Q2 ending late July is expected to grow by high-single digits sequentially and by 40% year over year, he said.
Costco is carrying “a few hundred million dollars'” worth of extra inventory in “late-arriving” holiday merchandise, which it will store until the fall “to ensure proper inventory levels in the face of these ongoing supply chain issues,” said Bob Nelson, senior vice president-finance and investor relations, on a quarterly earnings call Thursday for its fiscal Q3 ended May 8. “The additional inventory we're carrying is in the right departments,” and the Costco supply chain team feels good “about our ability to move it,” he said. Costco’s first warehouse club in China, located in Minhang, Shanghai, was closed for the last six weeks of the third quarter due to Beijing’s COVID-19 lockdowns, costing the company about $35 million in sales, said Nelson. The Minhang location reopened May 18, but it’s operating “under restrictions on the number of people that can be in the building at one time,” among other limitations, he said. Costco’s second building in Suzhou, which opened in December, “has largely avoided the lockdowns and restrictions to this point,” he said. The company’s currently targeting a December opening date for its third Shanghai building in Pudong, but the timing “will somewhat depend on the area remaining open for the next several months and not being more negatively impacted by lockdowns,” he said. Costco has four additional China buildings planned for the next two years, he said: “These would be our first China openings outside of Shanghai.”
Demand for the GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics processing units drove a 31% year-over-year increase in Nvidia’s gaming revenue to $3.6 billion in its fiscal Q1 ended May 1, said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress on a Wednesday earnings call. “The gaming industry has grown tremendously, with 100 million new PC gamers added in the past two years,” said Kress, citing Newzoo data. “End demand” for RTX graphics cards “remained solid” throughout the quarter, “though mixed by region,” with demand in the Americas staying strong, she said. “We started seeing softness in parts of Europe related to the war in the Ukraine and in parts of China due to the COVID lockdowns. As we expect some ongoing impact as we prepare for a new architectural transition later in the year, we are projecting gaming revenue to decline sequentially in Q2.”
Lenovo’s annual net profit topped $2 billion for the first time in its history, rising 72% year over year, said CEO Yang Yuanqing on an earnings call Thursday for the year and fiscal Q4 ended March 31. “Despite the disruption to supply under production due to the COVID-19 outbreak in China, we still managed to close the year with strong results,” he said.
With the “proliferation of digital,” information tech and security teams “are faced with an ever-evolving threat landscape,” said Splunk CEO Gary Steele on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q1 ended April 30. The call was Steele’s first since taking over as CEO in mid-April (see 2203030065). Security teams also face “increased complexity from piling on more and more tools across hybrid and multi-cloud environments and the silos created by all these data sources and fragmented teams that lead to inefficient detection and resolution,” he said. “There is an enormous market opportunity to help customers navigate this new reality.” Steele’s first priority is to “increase internal speed and agility across our people and organizations,” he said. “Flattening” Splunk’s organizational structure “will help us do that,” he said. Splunk will not “backfill” the positions vacated by the departures of Teresa Carlson, president-chief growth officer, and Shawn Bice, president-products and technology, said Steele: “I will be hands on with the go-to-market and product leadership teams.” Splunk’s total revenue for the quarter increased 34% year over year to $674 million. It expects fiscal Q2 revenue to finish in the range between $735 million and $755 million, which would be a 12% sequential increase at the high end.