FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Beyond Meat soars on debut
Celebrity-backed vegan burger start-up Beyond Meat Inc on Thursday made a sizzling Wall Street debut, more than doubling its share price. Backed by Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio and Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates, the California-based firm had valued itself at about US$1.5 billion at opening on the NASDAQ exchange, but its starting share price of US$25 soon sky-rocketed to US$65.75, before ending at US$59.43 — a valuation of US$3.38 billion.
APPAREL
Adidas profit beats forecasts
German sporting goods maker Adidas AG yesterday said that sales online and in China had pumped up profits and revenues in the first quarter. From January to March, net profit leaped 17 percent year-on-year to 632 million euros (US$705.5 million), outstripping forecasts from analysts surveyed by FactSet Research Systems Inc. Operating profits grew at the same pace, reaching 875 million euros, as revenues clambered 6 percent higher to 5.9 billion. Sales at the group’s flagship Adidas brand added 5 percent, it said.
CHEMICALS
BASF maintains targets
German chemicals giant BASF AG yesterday stuck to its full-year targets, even as it reported falling profits in the first quarter, blaming the drop on global trade tensions’ damping effect on business. From January to March, the Ludwigshafen-based group saw net profits fall 16 percent year-on-year to 1.4 billion euros. Operating profit fell 24 percent to 1.7 billion euros, although the group had managed to boost revenues 3 percent to 16.2 billion.
BANKING
French lender slides further
Societe Generale SA was unable to halt the slide in its investment bank last quarter. Profit at the unit that houses the trading operations declined 16 percent in what is usually its strongest period. Earnings were dragged down by fixed-income trading, while the larger business of buying and selling equities and providing services to hedge funds did better than almost all peers. The results contrast with those of larger rival BNP Paribas SA, which on Thursday surprised markets with a rebound in fixed-income trading that beat European and US peers.
AIRLINES
Air France-KLM still battling
Air France-KLM yesterday said its losses deepened in the first quarter of the year under the pressure of higher fuel costs and competition, although the group managed to boost passenger numbers. The net loss of 320 million euros was worse than the 269 million euro loss it suffered in the January to March period last year. The Dutch-French airline group’s shares fell more than 4 percent at the opening of trading in Paris, while the overall market was flat.
ENTRTAINMENT
Sinclair buys Fox networks
Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc has agreed to buy the Fox regional sports networks from Walt Disney Co, turning the local-TV company into a cable-sports powerhouse, the Wall Street Journal reported. The deal is valued at more than US$10 billion, the Journal said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. An agreement could have been announced as early as yesterday, the newspaper said. Disney and Sinclair did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained