The “enormous depth and complexity” of the “extended” automotive supply chain amid the global chip shortage caught NXP Semiconductors completely by surprise as it began struggling to meet automotive OEMs’ demand for critical components, conceded CEO Kurt Sievers on an investors call Tuesday for fiscal Q3 ended Oct. 3. Though the chip crunch in many sectors is deeply rooted in the consumer demand spikes from COVID-19 lockdowns that began in 2020, NXP now believes the roots of the chips crisis in the automotive sector began two years before the COVID-19 pandemic, said the CEO.
After an outsized 2020 season, when the COVID-19 pandemic drove consumers to invest heavily in home office and home entertainment products, spending on tech during the holiday season will grow just 0.5% year on year to $142.5 billion October-December, said CTA Tuesday. The October-December spend in 2020 was $141.8 billion, a 10.9% increase from 2019.
Despite “complex mechanics and forces at work,” the outlook is favorable for strong retail sales growth this holiday season,” said National Retail Federation Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz Tuesday in a holiday season forecast follow-up. Kleinhenz repeated NRF's optimistic forecast last week (see 2110270035) of Nov. 1-Dec. 31 sales growing 8.5%-10.5% to $843.4 billion-$859 billion, excluding sales of autos, gasoline and restaurants. "Even at the low end of the forecast, that would be both the largest growth rate -- topping last year’s 8.2 percent -- and the largest total amount -- beating last year’s $777.3 billion -- on record," he said.
Legislation to require online marketplaces like Amazon to verify third-party sellers got strong bipartisan support from the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday. But leadership needs to confer with the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction, said Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Automotive demand for On Semiconductor’s power modules and image-sensing devices “continues to outpace our current supply capabilities,” said CEO Hassane El-Khoury on a Monday call for Q3. The company rebranded itself Onsemi in early August.
Q3 trade show attendance for Emerald Holding's 32 shows -- 92,000 with 5,200 exhibitors -- was about half of pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, said CEO Herve Sedky on the company’s quarterly call Monday. Shares closed 16.8% higher Monday at $4.73.
Conflicting projections of the impact of COVID-19 were one of the factors behind the supply-demand mismatch that continues to plague the global supply chain, said Apple CEO Tim Cook on a Thursday earnings call. Some within and outside the industry “thought that the pandemic would reduce demand” so they “pulled their orders down” and “things reset,” Cook said: “What really happened was demand went up.” Yields also came into play, he said.
Amazon is optimistic it can meet customer demand in Q4, said Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky on a Q3 earnings call Thursday. He cited “a lot of promotional activity” in October to pull some demand forward from the typical November-December crunch around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. “Operationally, it's easier to perform when the volume is spread out," he said.
Shippers were caught off guard by a new surcharge announced by the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports that could exacerbate unfair detention and demurrage fees, members of the Federal Maritime Commission’s Shipper Advisory Committee said. The ports announced a surcharge to ocean carriers for containers that dwell at terminals, a fee that will likely be passed on to shippers, members said during the committee’s inaugural meeting Wednesday.
Open radio access networks with high security take work because they increase the potential attack surface, an Ericsson executive said at the Telecom TV ORAN summit Thursday. Speakers said few ORAN startups are likely to survive.