5/09/2025

BIZ & FINANCE FRIDAY | SEP T 5, 2025

18 BYD cuts sales target as white-hot growth cools

Jury tells Google to pay US$425m over app privacy SAN FRANCISCO: A US federal jury on Wednesday ordered Google to pay about US$425 million (RM1.8 billion) for gathering information from smartphone app use even when people opted for privacy settings, the company confirmed. “This case is about Google’s illegal interception of consumers’ private activity on consumer mobile applications (apps),” attorneys for the plaintiffs charged in a class action suit filed in July 2020. The jury verdict came at the end of a trial in San Francisco, and a day after a federal judge in Washington, DC, handed the internet giant a victory by rejecting the government’s demand that Google sell its Chrome web browser as part of a major antitrust case. “This decision misunderstands how our products work, and we will appeal it,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said in a statement. “Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalisation, we honour that choice.” In the smartphone app privacy suit, plaintiffs argued that Google intercepted, tracked, collected and sold users’mobile app activity data regardless of what privacy settings they chose. Google has long been under pressure to balance targeting money making ads at the heart of its financial success with protecting the privacy of users. – AFP India cuts consumption taxes after US tariff blow NEW DELHI: India on Wednesday slashed consumption taxes on everyday goods days after being hit with steep US tariffs, in a move analysts say is aimed at boosting demand. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) overhaul will simplify India’s complex four-tier system into two slabs and cut levies across sectors – in some cases by more than half – announced Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The tax cut will make a whole range of key consumers items from soap bars to motorbikes cheaper, but it is likely to strain public finances. The measures come after American President Donald Trump imposed tariffs of up to 50% on Indian imports, raising fears of an economic slowdown. Sitharaman insisted the GST cuts were not linked to the “tariff turmoil”, saying they were part of long-planned reforms. Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the changes. “The wide ranging reforms will improve lives of our citizens and ensure ease of doing business for all, especially small traders and businesses,” his office said in a social media statement. The new tax regime makes insurance premiums, including life and health coverage, tax-free, while cutting levies on motorbikes and small cars from 28% to 18%. Dozens of life-saving drugs are also tax exempt, according to a Finance Ministry note. – AFP

important automakers by doing much of its production in-house, allowing it to keep a lid on costs even as it rolls out cutting-edge features. Its sales of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids grew ten-fold between 2020 and 2024, to 4.3 million vehicles, putting it on par with General Motors and Ford in terms of global sales. Yet it is now showing undeniable signs of a slowdown, especially in its main market China, which accounts for almost 80% of its sales and is in the midst of a bruising, years-old price war. BYD has slowed production and delayed capacity expansion at its Chinese factories, Reuters reported in June. BYD’s sales of economy cars – those that go for under 150,000 yuan (RM88,000) and make up the bulk of its domestic sales – fell 9.6% in July versus last year, according to Reuters’ analysis of its filing and a sales breakdown by Chinese auto data platform DATADIC. By comparison, Geely’s sales of cars in that price segment jumped 90% year-on-year in July. Geely raised its annual sales target for 2025 to three million vehicles from 2.71 million, its executives said during an August earnings conference. BYD’s production slid for a second straight month in August, marking its first consecutive monthly contraction since 2020. – Reuters

down 1.4% before the Reuters report, extended losses and were down 3.1% in the afternoon. The people did not give a reason for the cut. However, one of them said it comes as BYD feels the heat from growing competition with rivals such as Geely Auto and Leapmotor. Last week, BYD reported a 30% drop in quarterly profit, its first decline in more than three years. BYD did not respond to a request for comment. The latest target, which has not been previously reported, is below several recently lowered forecasts from analysts. This week Deutsche Bank said it expected BYD to sell 4.7 million vehicles while Morningstar said it expected 4.8 million. The new target represents a 7% increase from last year and would be the slowest annual growth since 2020, when sales fell by 7%. The pared-back outlook also speaks to the deflationary pressure weighing on the world’s second-largest economy, where domestic demand has been hit by a prolonged housing downturn. In the first eight months of this year, BYD has only met some 52% of its original 5.5 million vehicle sales target. In just a few years, BYD has transformed itself from an EV upstart to one of the world’s most

o EV giant targets selling 4.6 million vehicles vs 5.5 million previously SHANGHAI: BYD has slashed its sales target for this year by as much as 16% to 4.6 million vehicles, two people with knowledge of the matter said, as the Chinese EV giant faces its slowest annual growth in five years and other signs that its era of record-setting expansion could be drawing to a close. China’s largest automaker told analysts in March it was targeting sales of 5.5 million vehicles for 2025. But internally, the number has been downgraded multiple times in recent months, according to the people. The latest figure of at least 4.6 million vehicles was communicated inside the company and to select suppliers last month to help guide planning, according to the people, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The target remains subject to change depending on market conditions, the people added. BYD’s Hong Kong-traded shares, which were

A drone view shows a BYD vessel at the Itajai port in Santa Catarina, Brazil. – REUTERSPIC

China firms keen on Nvidia chips despite govt pressure SHANGHAI: Alibaba, ByteDance and other Chinese tech firms remain keen on Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips despite regulators in Beijing strongly discouraging them from such purchases, four people with knowledge of procurement discussions said. times more powerful than the H20. Both chips are downgraded versions of models sold outside China, developed specifically to comply with US export restrictions. government 15% of its H20 revenue. At the same time, China is keen for its tech industry to wean itself off US chips.

Chinese authorities have summoned companies, including Tencent and ByteDance, over their purchases of the H20, asking them to explain their reasons and expressing concerns over information risks, sources said last month. They have, however, not been ordered to cease purchases of Nvidia products. Despite that pressure, demand for Nvidia chips remains strong in China due to constrained supplies of products from domestic rivals such as Huawei and Cambricon, the four sources said. Another three sources who are involved in engineering operations at Chinese tech firms also said Nvidia’s chips perform better than domestic products. Asked about its position versus rivals in China, Nvidia said in a statement that the “competition has undeniably arrived”. – Reuters

All sources for this article were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified. The extent to which China, which generated 13% of Nvidia’s revenue in the past financial year, can have access to cutting-edge AI chips is one of the biggest flashpoints in the US-Sino war for tech supremacy. On one hand, the US has retreated from its previous position of more severe restrictions on Nvidia sales of advanced chips to China. Nvidia and other critics of the controls say it is better if Chinese firms continue to use its chips – which work with Nvidia’s software tools – so that developers do not completely switch over to offerings from rivals like Huawei . US President Donald Trump has also struck a deal with Nvidia for it to give the American

They want reassurance that their orders of Nvidia’s H20 model, which the US firm in July regained permission to sell in China, are being processed, and are closely monitoring Nvidia’s plans for a more powerful chip, tentatively named the B30A and which is based on its Blackwell architecture, two of the people said. The B30A – if approved for sale by Washington – is likely to cost about double the H20, which currently sells for between US$10,000 and US$12,000, those two people said. Chinese tech firms perceive the potential B30A pricing, reported by Reuters for the first time, as a good deal, they added. One said the B30A promises to be up to six