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☆ Alibaba’s pushy shareholder mistimes his moment
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

HONG KONG, Jan 18 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Ryan Cohen has been pressing Alibaba (9988.HK), for improvements since last August, per the Wall Street Journal. As the owner of an undisclosed stake, he wants the company to boast its share buybacks. It confirms Alibaba’s emerging status as a mature company: revenue growth is forecast to almost halve to 10% by 2025, per Refinitiv. Increasing share purchases as the storm settles, and as an obstacle in the company’s growth path clears, would be odd. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Just Eat delivers right takeaway orders, finally
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Jan 18 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Food delivery boss Jitse Groen has started the new year with a glimpse of hope. Pleasing investors after a round of missteps, the Dutch company also forecast a higher-than-expected EBITDA of 225 million euros this year. The 5.6 billion euro ($6 billion) group’s results point to a brighter future than what Just Eat experienced in 2022. Less than a year after acquiring U.S. rival Grubhub, Groen made a U-turn by putting it up for sale and writing down the value of the division by 3 billion euros. All this happened while investors started to lose faith in the high-growth low-profit food delivery sector: Just Eat Takeaway lost 60% of its market value last year.

☆ UK payments star can keep defying fintech slump
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Volumes, a measure of the amount of currency that customers are changing, were 26.4 billion pounds - slightly lower than in the previous three-month stretch. Even after the selloff, Wise trades at a punchy 44 times forward earnings according to Refinitiv data. Volumes per retail customer indeed leapt to almost 4,000 pounds per quarter from April to September, before falling back to 3,500 pounds. Unlike other bombed-out fintech stocks, Wise’s revenue growth is strong, at 50% year-on-year in the most recent quarter, and it is highly profitable. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ UK’s giga fail is economic not environmental
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The collapse of a key battery manufacturer probably doesn’t compromise the government’s plan for the country to switch to electric vehicles. Its failure, however, knocks some 30 gigawatt hours out of Britain’s future battery manufacturing industry, over half of Britain’s forecast capacity by 2030 according to the Faraday Institution. The government’s plans to phase out new sales of internal combustion engines by 2030 can probably survive, thanks to imports from the likes of China’s BYD (002594.SZ), (1211.HK). But boosting battery production for a domestic industry will be hard, given Britain’s lack of raw materials and trade barriers with Europe. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Forget inflation, it’s all about earnings
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-15 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

They noted that over the last three quarters, S&P 500 reactions to earnings beats and misses have soared higher and have now surpassed the one-day market reaction to both CPI inflation and Fed policy meeting decisions. Shares of Disney sank 13.16% last November — their lowest level in more than two years — when they missed earnings estimates. “We see this as a narrative shift in the market from the Fed and inflation to earnings: reactions to earnings have been increasing, while reactions to inflation data and FOMC meetings have been getting smaller,” wrote Subramanian and Kwon. So we can expect some serious volatility over the next few weeks as companies report their fourth quarter corporate earnings. Bad news ahead: The estimated earnings decline for the S&P 500 in the fourth quarter of 2022 is -3.9%, according to a FactSet analysis.

☆ Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, agrees to a 40% target pay cut
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Anna Cooban | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

London CNN —Apple CEO Tim Cook has agreed to cut his pay this year after shareholders rebelled. The world’s largest tech company said it would reduce Cook’s target pay package to $49 million, 40% lower than his target pay for 2022 and about half Cook’s $99.4 million total compensation that he was granted last year. But shareholders voted against Cook’s pay package after Apple’s stock fell nearly 27% last year. This year, the executive’s share award target has been cut to $40 million. Apple’s share price, like other tech companies, plunged last year as coronavirus lockdowns shuttered some of its factories in China.

☆ Tim Cook’s pay re-enters earth’s atmosphere
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

His pay has been out of this world, but then so has the iPhone maker’s share price performance. Nonetheless Apple, its investors and its board have agreed Cook’s pay should orbit closer to Earth in 2023. On Friday, Apple said Cook’s targeted pay will fall to $49 million. Apple says it will target his pay between 80th and 90th percentile among peers in future years. A bigger improvement is making Cook’s pay less of a giveaway.

☆ Tim Cook’s Bad Day on China
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( William Mcgurn | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been taking a beating over his company’s coziness with Beijing. It comes amid protests across China against the government’s strict Covid-19 lockdowns, including at a factory in Zhengzhou where most of the world’s iPhones are made. Hillary Vaughn of Fox News perfectly captured Mr. Cook’s embarrassment on Capitol Hill Thursday when she peppered him with questions:“Do you support the Chinese people’s right to protest? Do you have any reaction to the factory workers that were beaten and detained for protesting Covid lockdowns? Do you think it’s problematic to do business with the Communist Chinese Party when they suppress human rights?”

In August, we spent a day driving around with Mr. Cook and his Tesla to assess the progress of this experimental technology. Tesla is driving But watch as the Tesla struggles to make sense of its environment, veering from the road into a motel parking lot. The experiences of beta testers like Mr. Cook are a window into the enormously ambitious and expensive bet that Tesla is making on self-driving technology. Guided by Tesla’s self-driving technology, the car drove along the river and over a bridge before reaching an intersection lined with trees. These companies are now preparing self-driving car services that will operate without backup drivers in places like San Francisco and Austin, Texas.

In the House, Republicans have 212 members and need to add six to guarantee a majority. Here’s a guide to some of the competitive races in which polls close early, which election forecasters say will carry a larger significance in reading the direction of the political environment. Virginia's three crystal ballsThe fates of three House Democrats first elected in the 2018 blue wave will tell a bigger story when Virginia’s polls close at 7 p.m. And in Florida, where polls close at at 7 p.m. Red wave sirensNew Hampshire is one of the earliest competitive Senate contests where polls close at 8 p.m.

☆ Exxon and Apple are in a similar boat
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Robert Cyran | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

NEW YORK, Oct 28 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) might be able to give Apple (AAPL.O) a lesson in disruption. Exxon’s profit was nearly triple last quarter what it was in the same quarter last year, and it wasn’t alone. Oil investors have been clear that they want discipline, as demand will likely peak soon if it hasn’t already. That means Exxon will presumably never reclaim its crown as the world’s most valuable firm, and Apple still earned far more than the company in the past year. Exxon earned $19.7 billion in the quarter, nearly tripling what it earned in the same period last year.

☆ Selma Blair makes a strong debut on ‘Dancing with the Stars’
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Marianne Garvey | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

CNN —Selma Blair made her debut on Monday’s season premiere of “Dancing with the Stars,” nearly four years after revealing her multiple sclerosis diagnosis. So don’t underestimate me,” Blair said on the show. Blair and her partner Sasha Farber danced the Viennese waltz to David Cook’s “Time of My Life.”Judge Carrie Ann Inaba grew emotional while watching the performance, during which Blair let her cane go. “Let’s Make a Deal” host Wayne Brady scored 29 points for his cha cha with pro partner Witney Carson. “Dancing with the Stars” streams Mondays on Disney+.

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