06/01/2017 BBC Business Live

This is Business Live from BBC News with Aaron

Samsung Electronics expects to report a 50% surge in fourth

quarter profits despite the fiasco with its flagship Note 7 phone.

Live from London, that's our top story on Friday 6th January.

Samsung's on track for its best profit in years -

and pledges to put the Galaxy Note 7 debacle behind it.

And the power of a Trump Tweet - the President-elect threatens

Toyota, and the result - $1.2 billion is wiped off

the value of the company in less than five minutes.

The markets appeared to be risk on mode. We'll tell you why.

Can economists be compared to weather-forecasters when it comes

Our Economics editor Kamal Ahmed will be here with that

and a look back at the rest of the business week.

And following the impact of Donald Trump's Toyota tweet,

we want to know what's the biggest Twitter storm you've ever sparked?

We start with Samsung - because in the last few hours

the South Korean tech giant has said it's on track for the best quarterly

It's a major boost for the company after the exploding smartphone

scandal that put a serious dent in its reputation.

In the three months to the end of December, Samsung is forecasting

That's up by half on the same period last year,

much better than expected and the best quarter since mid-2013.

That might come as a surprise, as we know Samsung was forced

to scrap its top of the range phone, the Galaxy Note 7, after a spate

Hugely embarrassing and hugely expensive.

It has warned the scandal sent more than $5 billion

Samsung makes chips and screens for the whole tech industry.

Samsung hasn't revealed the details but it's thought to have been

the best quarter ever for its semiconductor division.

It makes the complex chips that are more and more in demand

as phones get smarter, and the prices of those have jumped.

So despite the exploding phone scandal, Samsung's investors have

had a pretty good year, shares up by almost 50%

Cyrus Mewawalla, managing director of global technology research

Thank you for coming in. Looking at those figures, giving everything

that's happened in the past year, it sounds like a pretty positive result

from shareholders but how will they be feeling? I think Samsung

management have done a very good job this year. Record profits and the

share price has gone up 50%. Looking forward, Samsung's future may not be

that rosy for the rest of 2017. Earnings momentum will carry it for

a few weeks or months, but there are big roadblocks ahead of the Samsung.

It's a very successful hardware company, the eighth largest tech

company in the world, but it's week on software. If you look at the fact

Samsung are strong on chips and smartphones but that is yesterday's

story. Tomorrow's story is a whole new theme of technology, artificial

intelligence, virtual reality, internet TV, cyber security, the

Cloud. All these things have one thing in common which is software.

You need to have a software ecosystem to plug into which is

where Samsung is weak. I was talking to an expert this morning who was

telling us about the price of chips. Normally chip prices have come down

but some of the chips, D-Ram? Those prices are up, why are those prices

up? Prices of D-Ram have risen because there was an unexpectedly

good demand from smartphone makers all around the world. If you ask any

analyst, he'll have a massive supply and demand model. They will move out

of sync and when there is too much demand prices will go up. This can

change very, very quickly. What's more important in 2017 as far as

Samsung's chip division is concerned is new chip technologies. Samsung is

a specialist in memory chips, but what is happening around the world

is chip architectures are changing so logic chips and memory chips are

coming closer together and new type vulnerable types of chips are being

developed. AI chips are going to be big. Intel and Micron are developing

a new chip that could blow the technology out of the water. Thank

you for joining us this morning. The Australian economy has

recorded its first trade surplus The latest official numbers show

the country exported more than $900 million more goods

and services than it The resource rich nation saw big

growth in exports of coal, It means Australia is likely

to avoid the recession that some economists had feared,

after the economy's suprise in contraction in the third

quarter of last year. Mexico's president has

defended a sharp increase in the price of petrol

despite protests and looting. More than 250 people

have been arrested. Fuel prices went up by as much

as 20% at the beginning of the month Enrique Pena Nieto said the changes

were necessary because of the rise The average price of a gallon

of petrol is now almost as much You've got the live page. What did

you find? In the UK we've got some results out today. We mentioned

Next, a huge UK retailer. Share is continuing to fall after a

disappointing Christmas sales. That story is being reflected around the

world. What about this, outsmarted by your toothbrush. This is from the

consumer Electronics show. I think it's smart, it tells me how long

I've been doing it for but it also says if you are pressing too hard.

It's not a fancy things. Tesla? That is yesterday's! Let's move on! Let's

talk about this. The power of a tweet, some can be good, some can be

bad. Shares in the Japanese car-maker Toyota closed nearly 1.7%

down. They were at one point down nearly 3%. It is because Donald

Trump did something. He sent a tweet. He wrote that...

Sarah, sorry, we are just chatting away! Good to see you. At one point

that Trump tweet knocked $1.2 billion off the value of Toyota!

That's right. As you said, Toyota shares fell more than 3% in early

trade on Friday. But they did recover some ground. Closing down

around 1.7%. You have do remember, too, that the drop could be due to

the power of a Trump tweet, but it could also have been influenced by a

slightly stronger yen which is bad news for the country's exporters.

Despite Mr Trump's warnings, Toyota's president said the company

has no immediate plans to curb production in Mexico. Toyota has ten

manufacturing plants in the US and the company 's US arm says

production and employment levels in the US wouldn't decrease because of

the new Mexican plant. Lower labour costs and the Nafta free trade area

makes it attractive firms to make cars in Mexico to sell in the US. Mr

Trump says he will end this practice as it is costing American jobs. Have

a great weekend! The markets appear

to be risk-on mode. Well, traders suggesting it could be

because of the returns on US debt, It could be signs of stability

in Europe, or a recovery in oil. Anything that has been battered

by higher US rates is coming back. On the markets around the world,

is a correction of the "Trump The markets have been trying

to fully price in his policies That's what the traders

are telling us. Talking of telling us,

let's go see what Samira has to tell us about the big biz news

on the other side of the pond. Well, if it's the first

Friday of a new month then This will be the first unemployment

report for the New Year. It will be an opportunity for the US

Labor Department to offer insights on trends for the labour market

for the entire year of 2016. Now for the month of December,

economists are expecting to have added about 178,000 jobs,

similar to what we saw The unemployment rate

is likely to have increased Also being released

Friday is November's It will likely show that the trade

deficit narrowed for the month. The results of this report could

impact growth estimates for the US Joining us is Richard Dunbar,

Investment Director Thank you for coming in. We are

going to start off talking about BitCoin, the digital currency that

had headlines a couple of months ago. It fell 20% overnight. Explain

to us, what is Bitcoin? Digital or crypto currency on the web. Invented

by a programmer who we don't know who he or she is. It is

peer-to-peer, there is no central bank looking after it for us. Which

has made it very popular in an era when central banks seem to be

falling over themselves to debase their currencies. So no tangible

notes or coins? It's all cyber. All cyber but accepted by 100,000

retailers around the world. You can swap it for dollars... You can buy

your groceries with it in some places and swap it for other

currencies. Wasn't it the best performing currency last year? It's

doubled, more than doubled over the past year. It's had some wobbles

over its short history since 2008, but fell 20% overnight. What is the

appeal of Bitcoin? Appeal is that it's not controlled by central banks

or politicians. It competes with traditional currencies and since the

financial crisis we had seen central banks and governments falling over

themselves to reduce the value of their currencies, boost exports and

their economy. Which is great for those economies but if you are

selling these currencies and you either don't trust or trust these

politicians then maybe something else is better. I suspect, and my

traditional training would suggest that a fool and his money are easily

parted but it has been a big performer. Do you have any? No.

We'll leave it there. Identity then have any real money! -- I don't even

have any real money! Coming up - what do

economists and weather You're with Business

Live from BBC News. Consultants BDO say High Street

retail sales last month were down slightly compared

to the previous year. That's the fourth year in a row

of falling sales and follows a dramatic plunge in sales

in December 2015. Our business correspondent

Theo Leggett joins us now Theo, what does this say

about the health of the High Street? There has been a fall in December

sales for the past four years. This year's were only down slightly on

last year, but that was after what was really seen as a very bad year

last year. There hasn't been much recovery, that can't be a good

thing. Another point I took from this report is that the first three

weeks in December were pretty awful. The month as a whole retailers was

kind of saved by the week before Christmas. Christmas fell on a

Sunday so we had Christmas Eve being a Saturday. That really brought

people are out shopping. Overall for the month it was a bad period for

the high street retailers. If they can't do well in December that

doesn't bode well for them going forward, especially as we are

expecting inflation to be on the up over the next few months. Internet

retailers did rather well. They did, but in general consumers are still

spending, right? They're still putting their hand in their pocket?

Absolutely, just because they aren't going to the high-street doesn't

mean they aren't spending. We saw a 20% increase in online shopping and

a 50% increase in the run-up to Christmas. At the moment, consumer

sentiment seems to be holding up relatively well. Some areas aren't

doing as well as others. Home where, soft furnishings are doing well.

Retailers who are in fashion are struggling. We had the results from

Next, they aren't alone. Fashion retailers are feeling the pinch.

Part of that is because of the weather. It hasn't been cold enough,

obviously! You Brits love to blame the weather

and everything. What have you got? Do you check your e-mail for work at

home? I check it all the time. I don't

think of it as a chore. I have FOMO, fear of missing out.

Workers in France have been told they don't have to be compelled to

check e-mails outside office hours. The French have a 35 hour working

week. They have got it right! Know they

haven't, look at the economy. Samsung Electronics expects

to report a 50% surge in fourth quarter profits,

despite the fiasco with its We seem to have a short memory, but

it is more their components side that is pushing those profits out.

A quick look at how markets are faring.

Markets are all in the red. But they have had a cracking time of it.

The FTSE 100, only early in the day, but the FTSE 100 has had something

like three new record, continuous record highs in succession.

You think it is time for a correction?

It's only the end of the first week of 2017 and already some of the big

themes of the coming year are with us.

There's the incoming US president Donald Trump,

who yesterday sent a Tweet that caused Toyota shares to plummet.

And then there are the ongoing negotiations over Brexit,

including the resignation of the UK's ambassador

Plus, the Bank of England's Chief Economist has admitted that

economists, like weather forecasters, can sometimes

When I said the big bloke, I said that with absolute respect!

Our Economics Editor Kamal Ahmed is with us.

What was Andy Haldane talking about exactly?

Is he a mate of yours? No, and neither is Donald Trump, but his

policies, have alluded that they could be inflationary? He wants to

have this big fiscal stimulus, wants to spend a lot more money rebuilding

airports, roads and rebuilding America's infrastructure, which is

seen as in pretty poor state. That will have an inflationary pressure

as that flows into the American economy. It is fascinating. We have

spoken about this on a number of occasions on our analysis of

President-elect from. Was he going to be the president like the

campaigning Donald Trump? Would he change his tone after he won. Would

there be a more conservative President-elect. What we have seen

from these tweets and the way he is behaving, how he campaigned and how

at the moment he seems to be saying how he will be the president, are

pretty similar. He is very aggressive about car companies, for

example, that are producing cars in Mexico. Has been critical of Toyota,

General Motors. He praised Ford who said they would move production into

America from Mexico. In Billy Macri has been pretty front foot on how he

campaigned. He can affect things in real-time. People voted, or the

election gave us a different type of president and that is what people

seemed to want. He's doing that. A notion that the president of the

United States tweeting policy in real-time, which as you say, have

these huge effects on very large companies' share price has come is a

new way of operating. Will it continue after his inauguration on

January the 20th? We will see, but at the moment campaigning Donald

Trump and President-elect Trump is pretty similar. The chief economist

of the banker links -- Bank of England says predicting the future

is hard? Yes, Michael Fish said in 1987 he didn't believe a hurricane

was on its way, 24 hours before one of the most devastating hurricane to

hit the South East and caused millions of devastation. The chief

economist of the Bank of England has said, we also sometimes get it

wrong! The bank forecast that if there was a vote for Brexit, which

there was in the UK, that there would be an immediate negative

effect on the UK economy. That hasn't appeared in the short term at

least, to have happened. Consumers are still spending strongly. And the

Bank of England is saying just like weather forecasters, they have to

learn the lesson that that prediction was wrong. Economists,

they have to use the data better. They have to be aware that economics

is a judgment of human behaviour. And that will be difficult. It is

always going to be tricky and imprecise. What they are saying is,

we need to be more honest about that. We mentioned about the UK's

ambassador to the EU, a resignation and an appointment already. What

would that do to Theresa May's negotiating position on Brexit? It

is reported now she will make quite a big speech in the next few weeks,

laying out Britain's position to an extent, or at least by which Britain

will approach the members of the European Union when Britain sparks

Article 50, the process to leave the European Union. The British Prime

Minister, she feels like she has to take care. If you reveal too much of

your hand in a negotiation, you have lost leveraged and power by doing

that. She doesn't want to put herself into the position where she

has made her position clear and Britain is unclear what the rest of

the European nations want. She has to play it carefully and we will not

see a huge amount of detail on what Britain actually wants from that

Article 50 process. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend.

In a moment we'll take a look through the Business Pages but first

here's a quick reminder of how to get in touch with us.

The business live page is where you stay ahead of the braking business

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want to hear from you. Get Involved on the BBC Business Live web page.

And on Twitter... You can find us on Facebook. Business Live on TV and

online, whenever you need to know. What other business

stories has the media been Richard Dunbar, Investment

Director at Aberdeen Would you have liked to have gone to

a football boarding school? It seems like a good option in China. $8,000

a year. Some academic stuff probably, but mostly football. 32

football pitches around the schools and it looks like a great way to

spend your education. They have so many fields. 48 football pitches.

But they will start churning out probably world-class football

players? China has decided it wants to win the World Cup, so it has to

throw money at the problem, as it has done in other sports. They are

probably going to continue to fuel the football cost boom that we have

seen in Europe and our players will be attracted to that also. Can I

talk about another big business? Do you like sushi? I love sushi. I love

Japanese food. Tell us about that photo, how much did he pay for that?

That was sold yesterday morning for $600,000. So when you chop that big

fish up, it will be expensive for each little bit that goes into

sushi. The man who bought it said it was a little bit expensive! He is

known as the tuna PR king. I suspect he is putting bat against his

marketing budget. My concern is it is always 24 hours old, when does it

stop being fresh gesture marked that is your fault for eating the raw

stuff. We cook it. Have you returned any Christmas gifts? No, didn't get

any. This is the biggest day for returns in the US. All the stuff

that arrived after Christmas, you can now return. Richard, have a

great weekend. OK, got to go. Have a good weekend, we are getting booted

off. Goodbye. Good morning. Rain on the menu over

the next 24 hours or so. Further east, it is a different story. Snow

more likely to be coming out of the