PayPal is beginning to see “some slivers of light” amid a “very tough” global geopolitical and macroeconomic environment, CEO Dan Schulman told a Bank of America investor conference Thursday. China is “slowly reopening domestically” after many weeks of COVID-19 lockdowns, he said. “We have quite a number of people in China, so we have a lot of insight there.” The Chinese are “rapidly moving to open their ports,” but the whole global supply chain is still in “a bit of a funk right now,” he said. “So even if China opens, whether they can get goods out of China into the U.S. is still TBD.” Despite some “glimmers of hope,” Schulman thinks the supply chain is in for “a long tough slog for the rest of this year,” he said.

Acer’s revenue in May declined 10.6% year over year to $22.18 billion New Taiwan dollars ($750 million) but grew 15.4% from April “due to improvement of the supply chain,” reported the PC vendor Friday. January-May revenue of 119.78 billion New Taiwan dollars ($4.05 billion) was down 1.3% from the same 2021 period, it said. May’s revenue in Acer’s gaming business grew 69.4% month over month, 114.6% year over year and 28.5% for the year to date, it said.

ATIS Tuesday released a 5G supply chain standard, designed, it said, to make networks more secure. The standard “addresses the 5G supply chain (5G/SC) as a critical function in the design, build, deployment, and operation of 5G assured networks,” the document says. “Securing the 5G information and communications technology supply chain is critical as 5G capabilities expand rapidly in North America,” said ATIS President Susan Miller: Following a request by DOD, “ATIS has brought together leading industry and government partners to develop this standard. We are confident in the standard’s ability to deliver the multiple levels of assurance needed to secure the 5G supply chain.”

The National Retail Federation won’t require proof of vaccination to attend its in-person NRF Supply Chain 360 event June 20-21 at the Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland, said an association media alert Friday. “NRF strongly encourages all attendees to be vaccinated and boosted,” it said. “Masks will be available for those who wish to wear them while at the show and we will have rapid COVID-19 tests available.” Featured speakers at the event will include Zach Freeze, Walmart senior director-sustainability; Becca Meinz, Best Buy vice president-end-to-end supply chain strategy; and Eugene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.

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.”

Exacerbation of the industry supply chain woes from the COVID-19 lockdowns in China is rendering “a different story for everyone,” Qualcomm Chief Financial Officer Akash Palkhiwala told a J.P. Morgan investors conference Monday. Qualcomm’s sourcing capabilities are “very diversified from a total supply perspective,” he said. It uses Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samung as its foundry sources, “and on the backend side, we use a combination of several suppliers, so our exposure to China is limited,” he said. “There's pockets of things we're navigating through” in the supply chain, “but nothing that really directly impacts us at scale,” he said.

Pixelworks is trying its best to navigate through the COVID-19 lockdowns affecting its Shanghai subsidiary, said CEO Todd DeBonis on a Q1 earnings call Tuesday. The company markets visual processors to Chinese smartphone OEMs. “We have offices located in multiple provinces, and our China-based employees are not exclusively in Shanghai,” he said. “The imposed restrictions often vary by specific region. Therefore, any potential impacts are not universal.” The Pixelworks “operations team and supply chain partners” are in Taiwan, “and as of today, there has been no associated impact on our ability to fulfill planned shipments to our customers,” he said. “Having said that, the reported lockdowns have presented temporary challenges for a certain number of our employees.” The company’s office in Shanghai's Pudong district “is working with local officials to reopen over the next couple of weeks,” he said. Despite the lockdowns, “we have sustained all operational and R&D activities,” said the CEO.

Acer finished April with consolidated revenue of 19.23 billion Taiwan new dollars ($646.6 million), down 22.9% year over year and 36.6% lower sequentially from March, reported the company Tuesday. January-April revenue of 97.6 billion Taiwan new dollars ($3.3 billion) was up 1.1% from the same 2021 period, it said. “Multiple factors” caused the monthly revenue decline, but mainly “supply-chain disruptions from the ongoing pandemic” were the cause, it said.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security is extending by a month to June 23 its deadline for comments in docket BIS-2021-0046 to better “inform the work” of the Secure Supply Chains Working Group of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council to promote supply chain resilience and security in semiconductors, rare-earth magnets and other “key sectors,” says a notice for Tuesday's Federal Register. The extension is to enable commenters to “take into account any developments or announcements” at the next TTC “leaders’ meeting” scheduled for Sunday-Monday in France, it said.

The House plans to consider two telecom supply chain bills as soon as Wednesday under suspension of the rules: the Transatlantic Telecommunications Security Act (HR-3344) and Protecting Semiconductor Supply Chain Materials from Authoritarians Act (HR-7372). HR-3344 and Senate companion S-2876 would help Central and Eastern European countries build 5G networks using equipment not made by Chinese manufacturer Huawei, including by authorizing U.S. International Development Finance Corporation financing for infrastructure development. HR-7372 would create a working group for reporting on the semiconductor supply chain disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The group would develop strategies for bolstering supplies of semiconductor materials and monitor potential threats to supply chains.