Less than half of young people in UK watch live TV, Ofcom finds; Samsung expects strong AI chip demand

Key events

A technician holding a wafer in a sterile room at IQE’s plant in Wales. Photograph: IQE/AFP/Getty Images

Samsung is not the only company that has benefited from computer chip hype. British silicon wafer manufacturer IQE is up 9% this morning after saying it will list its Taiwan subsidiary on the country’s stock exchange.

Taiwan is perhaps the most important global centre for chip-making because of the dominance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in producing the most advanced chips.

IQE is not involved in that business, but its “epi-wafer” products are used in Apple’s iPhones for facial recognition, Reuters reported.

IQE, which was valued at £284m at yesterday’s close, will sell a minority shareholding in the initial public offering, but it intends to retain control of the subsidiary, IQE Taiwan.

HSBC to pay out $4.8bn to shareholders says outgoing boss

Kalyeena Makortoff

Noel Quinn will retire as chief executive of HSBC in September. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

HSBC is giving a further $4.8bn to shareholders, providing a final parting gift from the outgoing chief executive, Noel Quinn, after a rise in second-quarter profit.

The London-headquartered bank said it would buy back another $3bn (£2.3bn) worth of shares from investors, who will receive $1.8bn in fresh dividends.

It will mean Quinn will have paid $34.4bn to shareholders during his final 18 months in post, as part of a strategy that helped fend off calls to break up the bank, led by its top shareholder, China’s Ping An Asset Management.

He will hand the reins to the chief financial officer, Georges Elhedery, who was revealed as his successor earlier this month, in September.

The payouts come after HSBC managed to eke out a 1.5% increase in pre-tax profit to $8.9bn in the second quarter, up from $8.7bn a year earlier. The bank, which makes the bulk of its profits in Asia, benefited from growth in its wealth division and increased demand for investment banking services.

You can read the full story here:

Europe’s stock markets have opened higher on Wednesday.

London’s FTSE 100 has been boosted by the mining contingent and HSBC – more on both of those to come shortly.

Here are the opening snaps, via Reuters:

EUROPE’S STOXX 600 UP 0.6%
BRITAIN’S FTSE 100 UP 0.9%
FRANCE’S CAC 40 UP 1.3%; SPAIN’S IBEX FLAT
EURO STOXX INDEX UP 0.5%; EURO ZONE BLUE CHIPS UP 0.5%
GERMANY’S DAX UP 0.5%

Young Brits abandon broadcast TV; Samsung expects strong AI chip demand

Good morning, and welcome to our live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets.

Only 48% of British young people watch broadcast television in an average week, the first time that the share has dropped below half, according to new data from regulator Ofcom.

The proportion of those between 16 and 24 years old who tuned into traditional broadcasters has dropped steeply from 76% in 2018, as the use of online video sharing platforms like TikTok and YouTube has surged. Those young people who do watch TV spend 33 minutes a day on it, compared with an average of 1 hour 33 minutes on video-sharing apps and websites – albeit often accessed through the TV.

Children aged between 4 and 15 are also shifting away from broadcast television rapidly. Only 55% watched broadcast TV each week in 2023, compared to 81% in 2018.

The division between different generations’ habits is stark, if not perhaps that surprising: 95% of the over-65s still watch television every week.

Video sharing platforms dominate viewing habits of young people in Britain, according to Ofcom. Photograph: Ofcom

Yet overall numbers of viewers of traditional broadcast media have been falling across the generations for several years.

Ian Macrae, Ofcom’s director of market intelligence, said:

Gen Z and Alpha are used to swiping and streaming, not flipping through broadcast TV channels. They crave the flexibility, immediacy and choice that on-demand services offer, spending over three hours a day watching video, but only 20 minutes of live TV. It’s no surprise that the traditional TV is fast becoming a device of choice to watch YouTube.

But while live TV may not have the universal pull it once did, its role in capturing those big moments that bring the nation together remains vital.

The Olympics fortnight is a good time to be making that point. And another sporting event was the biggest of the year so far: the BBC and ITV together averaged 15.1m viewers for the UEFA Euro 2024 men’s final between England and Spain.

Samsung expects strong demand for chips

Who is making the devices used to stream video? One of the most prominent is Samsung. The Korean technology manufacturer has reported a strong rise in profits – although it said that demand for chips for artificial intelligence was a big factor.

Samsung’s profits rose fifteen-fold in the second quarter compared with last year. Operating profit rose to 10.4tn won (£5.8bn) in April-June, up from 670bn won a year earlier, Samsung said.

The company is the world’s largest manufacturer of smartphones, televisions and memory chips. It is the latter that has been behind its recent profit surge – although it is also counting on increased AI features to sell more of its top-end phones.

Share prices of companies with links to artificial intelligence have boomed in recent years as investors try to work out who the big winners will be. Top among those companies have been the chip manufacturers and designers, although some of the enthusiasm appears to have waned in recent weeks. Nvidia, the biggest beneficiary, has fallen by 20% from its peak as something of a bubble has appeared to burst.

Samsung, though, is still positive about AI demand. It said:

In the second half of 2024, AI servers are expected to take up a larger portion of the (memory) market as major cloud service providers and enterprises expand their AI investments.