- Rio Tinto (RIO1 TH) +2.5%
- GSK (GS71 TH) +2.2%
- GSK Says It Will Vigorously Defend All Zantac Claims
- Sanofi, GSK Selloff on Zantac Viewed as ‘Overdone’: Street Wrap
- Freenet (FNTN TH) +1.3%
- Freenet Raises FY Ebitda Forecast
- Reckitt (3RB TH) +1.3%
- GSK Must Regret Passing on Unilever’s £50 Billion: Chris Hughes
- BAT (BMT TH) +1.1%
- Thyssenkrupp (TKA TH) +1.1%
- Fresenius SE (FRE TH) +1%
- Fresenius SE Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 35 euros
- Sandvik (SVKB TH) +0.6%
- L’Oreal (LOR TH) +0.5%
- Novo Nordisk (NOVC TH) +0.4%
- Pharma On Track as Sanofi Stands Tall, Price Reforms Disappoint
- Sanofi (SNW TH) -0.6%
- Sanofi, GSK Selloff on Zantac Viewed as ‘Overdone’: Street Wrap
- Verbund (OEWA TH) -0.8%
- Siemens Energy (ENR TH) -0.8%
- Siemens Healthineers (SHL TH) -0.9%
- Knorr-Bremse (KBX TH) -0.9%
- Knorr-Bremse 2Q Ebit EU162M Vs. EU244M Y/y
- Aixtron (AIXA TH) -0.9%
- Alstom (AOMD TH) -1%
- TUI (TUI1 TH) -1%
- OMV (OMV TH) -1.2%
- Aviva (GU81 TH) -1.4%
DAX:
- Fresenius SE (FRE TH) +1.1%
- Fresenius SE Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 35 euros
- Covestro (1COV TH) +0.4%
- RWE (RWE TH) +0.4%
- BASF (BAS TH) +0.4%
- Rhine River Set to Shrink to Critical Threshold for Navigability
- BMW (BMW TH) +0.2%
- BMW to Launch Fuel Cell SUV as Soon as 2025: Nikkei
MDAX:
- Freenet (FNTN TH) +1.8%
- Freenet Raises FY Ebitda Forecast
- Thyssenkrupp (TKA TH) +1.7%
- Rhine River Set to Shrink to Critical Threshold for Navigability
- Encavis (ECV TH) +1.3%
- Uniper (UN01 TH) +0.7%
- Rhine River Set to Shrink to Critical Threshold for Navigability
- Evonik (EVK TH) +0.4%
- Jungheinrich (JUN3 TH) -0.2%
- Jungheinrich 2Q Revenue Beats Estimates
- ProSieben (PSM TH) -0.5%
- K+S (SDF TH) -0.5%
- K+S Cut to Sector Perform at Scotiabank; PT 26 euros
SDAX:
- VERBIO Vereinigte (VBK TH) +1.2%
- Ceconomy (CEC TH) +1.1%
- Bilfinger (GBF TH) +1%
- Bilfinger Shares Turn Negative; UBS Says 2Q ‘Slightly Weak’
- SAF-Holland SE (SFQ TH) +0.5%
- Saf-Holland Bought 2.23m Haldex Shares From Kite Lake
- SMA Solar (S92 TH) -0.4%
- SMA Solar Gains on Revenue Results Despite Macro Headwinds
- Metro (B4B TH) -1%
An Asian stock gauge and US equity futures rose Friday as investors assessed whether signs of cooling inflation will enable the Federal Reserve to pivot to less pugnacious interest-rate increases. MSCI Inc.’s Asia-Pacific equity index rose more than 0.5%, propped up by a catch-up rally in Japan following a holiday there. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 contracts advanced, while European futures were steady. The 30-year maturity led a dip in Treasury yields. A dollar gaugeslipped, gold pushed higher and Bitcoin oscillated around the $24,000 level. In the latest US central banker comments, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said inflation is too high, adding she anticipates more restrictive monetary policy in 2023. She said her baseline is a half-point September hike but that she’s open to another 75 basis-point move if necessary. Stocks this week have cheered the possibility that ebbing price pressures will take the pressure off the Fed to keep hiking rates sharply, making a soft economic landing more likely. Global shares are set for the longest streak of weekly gains since 2021, paring their retreat this year to about 14%. The bond market is more skeptical -- an ongoing Treasury yield curve inversion hints at concerns that only a recession can curb the cost of living. Swaps referencing the Fed’s September meeting point to some uncertainty over whether a half-point or another 75 basis-point rate hike is on the cards. Raw-material prices are adding to the complexity. Oil headed for a weekly gain that’s contributed to a more than 10% rebound in a commodity index from a July low -- a trend that could darken the inflation picture if it continues. US After Hours TOST +11.1% higher on earnings; OLO -29%, LAW -22.3%, ILMN -15.2%, EXFY -14.5% lower on earnings
Nikkei +2.52% Hang Seng +00.36% CSI -0.06% Shanghai -0.11% Shenzen -0.26%
Eur$ 1.0321 CNH 6.7358 CNY 6.7371 JPY 133.25 GBP 1.2194 CHF 0.9418 RUB 60.8987 TRY 17.9625 WTI$ 93.95 -0.40% Gold 1,7912.21 +0.08% BTC 23,935 -1.16% ETH 1,890.05 -0.65%
S&P +0.25% Nasdaq +0.35% EuroStoxx -0.03% FTSE +0.06% Dax +0.00% SMI -0.20%
Macro :
- China’s SMIC Warns of ‘Rapid Freeze’ as Smartphone Demand Skids
Keep an eye on :
- ANTO LN : A $1 Billion Cost Blowout Feeds Into the Bullish View on Copper
- BHG SS :BHG Group CEO Schatz Steps Down; Chairman to Become Acting CEO
- BMW GY : BMW to Launch Fuel Cell SUV as Soon as 2025: Nikkei
- COIN US : China Crypto Mogul Seeks to Sell Huobi Stake at $3 Billion Value
- SFER IM : Farfetch Gains After Reporting Salvatore Ferragamo Partnership
- FRAS LN : Frasers Says Completed Sale of Some Retail Parks for GBP205M
- FNTN GY : Freenet Raises FY Ebitda Forecast
- JAR LN : Jardine Matheson Slumps 9.6% as MSCI Cuts Co. Weight in Indexes
- JUN3 GY : Jungheinrich 2Q Revenue Beats Estimates
- KESKOB FH : Kesko July Sales From Continuing Operations EU920.8M
- KBX GY : Knorr-Bremse 2Q Ebit EU162M Vs. EU244M Y/y
- LOTB BB : Lotus Bakeries 1H Adjusted Net Beats Estimates
- NOVN SW : Novartis’ Tabrecta Gets Regular FDA OK for Some NSCLC Patients
- NOVN SW : *NOVARTIS SAYS 2 DIED FROM LIVER FAILURE AFTER GENE THERAPY:STAT
- PAT GY : PATRIZIA SE 1H Revenue EU158.5M Vs. EU140.2M Y/y
- PIHLIS FH : Pihlajalinna 2Q EPS Misses Estimates
- QQ/ LN : QinetiQ Holder to Sell About 25.4m Shares via Citi: Terms
- SAS SS : SAS Sells Trust Forwarding Unit for DKK26 Million, JP Says
- SFQ GY : Saf-Holland Bought 2.23m Haldex Shares From Kite Lake
- SIM DC : Simcorp 2Q Ebit Misses Estimates
- S92 GY : SMA Solar Gains on Revenue Results Despite Macro Headwinds
- SZU GY : Suedzucker Boosts FY Operating Profit Forecast
- VZN SW : VZ Holding 1H Operating Revenue CHF210M Vs. CHF187.8M Y/y
- WUW GY : W&W 1H Net Income EU96M Vs. EU196.2M Y/y
- ZURN SW : Zurich Airport July Passenger Traffic +84.7%
>>> Up
* Beazley Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley; PT 678 pence
* Fresenius SE Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 35 euros
* Holmen Raised to Buy at Nordea; PT 480 kronor
* Sanofi Raised to Hold at Deutsche Bank; PT 90 euros
* SMA Solar Raised to Hold at Jefferies; PT 52 euros
* Sodexo Raised to Outperform at Exane; PT 90 euros
* Stroeer Raised to Equal-Weight at Barclays; PT 53 euros
* UPM-Kymmene Raised to Buy at Jefferies; PT 37.25 euros
>>> Down
* Alcon Cut to Hold at SocGen; PT 73.60 Swiss francs
* BCP Cut to Neutral at Grupo Santander; PT 20 euro cents
* Dufry Cut to Neutral at Goldman; PT 44 Swiss francs
* Equinor Cut to Underperform at Grupo Santander; PT 270 kroner
* Eutelsat Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan; PT 8 euros
* Fractal Gaming Group Cut to Hold at ABG; PT 25 kronor
* K+S Cut to Sector Perform at Scotiabank; PT 26 euros
* McPhy Cut to Hold at Panmure Gordon; PT 15.30 euros
* Mowi Cut to Neutral at Exane; PT 240 kroner
* Nel Cut to Hold at Panmure Gordon; PT 15.60 kroner
* Netcompany Cut to Buy at Jyske Bank; PT 550 kroner
* Telenet Cut to Neutral at Goldman; PT 16.50 euros
* TF1 Cut to Underweight at Barclays; PT 6.50 euros
>>> Initiation
* 3i Infra Rated New Buy at Numis; PT 1,940 pence
* Johnson Matthey Resumed Neutral at Citi; PT 2,200 pence
* Oracle Rated New Buy at Guggenheim; PT $107
>>> Call
* Bayer Narrative Improving, Glyphosate Provisioning Ample: Citi
* Beazley Upgraded at MS After Robust 1H for Lloyd’s Insurers
* IG Group Up to Buy at Liberum as ‘Promising’ Growth Seen Ahead
* SMA Solar Raised at Jefferies as Solar Boom ‘Lifting All Boats’
* UPM Upgraded to Buy at Jefferies on ‘Appealing’ Earnings Outlook
After Hours Summary: TOST +11.1% higher on earnings; OLO -29%, LAW -22.3%, ILMN -15.2%, EXFY -14.5% lower on earningsAfter Hours Gainers:
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: PAYO +18.7%, TOST +11.1%, LZ +6.5%, PDFS +4.1%, JOBY +3.7%, INDI +3.3%, SAND +3.2%, VIAV +2.3%, AQN +1.7%, FLO +0.8%, RKLB +0.7%, SWIR +0.5%, UP +0.4%
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: GWH +14.4% (to partner with Energy Storage on iron flow batteries using ESS technology in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania), PCT +10.1% (provides Q2 operational update), JJSF +5% (increases dividend), RCEL +2.7% (announces topline results for its trial evaluating the RECELL System), TK +2.5% (authorizes new $30 mln share repurchase program), CELU +2.2% (files $450 mln mixed securities shelf offering), HLLY +1.8% (stock offering), TU +1.4% (receives court approval and key regulatory approvals for its proposed acquisition of LifeWorks), AEM +1% (provides update on YTD exploration results), NVS +0.9% (two children have died from acute liver failure after being administered Zolgensma, according to STAT News), AAPL +0.1% (asks suppliers to build same number of iPhones for sale this year as it did last year, according to Bloomberg), JNJ +0.1% (to no longer sell talc-based baby power globally in 2023, according to Reuters)
After Hours Losers:
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: OLO -29%, LAW -22.3%, ILMN -15.2%, EXFY -14.5%, SST -8.2% (also authorizes $25 mln stock and warrant repurchase program), FORG -7.8%, POSH -5.3%, SMRT -4.1%, MCW -3.3%, VET -2.6% (also increases dividend), CDRE -1.9%, WPM -1.9%, ATGE -1.6%, EDR -1.5% (also acquires majority stake in Barrett-Jackson), CORZ -1.2%, RYAN -0.9%, RIVN -0.7%, VTEX -0.7%, RMD -0.2% (also increases dividend)
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: CERT -8.9% (announces 7 mln share offering by selling shareholders), INSP -1.7% (commences 1 mln share offering), BLK -1.2% (launches a spot bitcoin private trust), FPI -0.2% (stock offering), CPA -0.1% (reports July traffic)
BlackRock pushes into crypto market with bitcoin private trust
Asset manager to offer investment vehicle only to institutional clients in the US
BlackRock has announced the launch of a spot bitcoin private trust, deepening a push into digital assets as the crypto industry is recovering from the fallout of a credit crisis.
The world’s largest asset manager said in a blog post on Thursday that the private trust would be available only to institutional clients in the US, but gave few other details.
US regulators have repeatedly rejected proposals to offer spot bitcoin exchange traded funds that would be open to retail investors, citing the need for investor protections.
The move by BlackRock potentially puts the investment house, whose chief executive Larry Fink has publicly criticised bitcoin, into competition with Grayscale, the world’s biggest investment vehicle for cryptocurrencies.
It comes as the crypto industry deals with the fallout of an acute drop in the price of assets like bitcoin, which has lost two-thirds of its value since its all-time high last November. The total market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies dropped from around $3.2tn to less than $1tn in that time.
“Despite the steep downturn in the digital asset market, we are still seeing substantial interest from some institutional clients in how to efficiently and cost-effectively access these assets using our technology and product capabilities”, BlackRock said in a statement.
“The launch of BlackRock’s bitcoin fund is a sign of how far crypto has matured as an asset class”, said Sui Chung, chief executive of crypto index provider CF Benchmarks.
Earlier this week BlackRock agreed to join its Aladdin investment technology platform to Coinbase, the crypto exchange. The network is widely-used in the fund management industry to link asset managers, insurers and banks to markets.
Other fund managers are also dipping their toes into the crypto market. In recent months Schroders picked up a stake in the crypto-focused fund manager Forteus while Fidelity announced it would allow investors to add cryptocurrencies to their portfolios in 401(k) retirement schemes.
However, BlackRock’s pivot to digital assets marks a significant evolution from previous comments made by Fink. In 2017, the chief executive said “bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world”, adding “that’s all it is”.
BlackRock’s bitcoin embrace also follows the firm’s previous calls for global environmental, social and governance standards in a bid to bolster sustainability efforts. Bitcoin — which runs on an energy intensive blockchain system — has been criticised for its carbon footprint and broader impact on the environment.
US streaming wars: big bets by Hollywood titans remain uneven
Maybe Rupert Murdoch and AT&T knew what they were doing all along. In recent years both have curtailed their Hollywood ambitions. The pair sold entertainment assets to buyers keen to do battle in the content streaming wars. So far this year, Fox and AT&T shares have held up versus declining market indices. Other media titans have discovered that the direct-to-consumer content business is not only expensive but also a smaller market than hoped.
Late on Wednesday, Disney, which has acquired Fox’s studio assets, reported that it had signed up 14.4mn new streaming subscribers to its Disney Plus service, more than expected. The next day shares rose 6 per cent in response. But that growth was costly. Disney Plus recorded a quarterly operating loss of $1.1bn on $5.1bn of revenue. The group also admitted it would not reach its long-term outlook for 260mn subscribers by 2024.
An even bigger high-wire act in media is the recently christened Warner Bros Discovery, the result of Discovery’s acquisition of Warner Media from AT&T for $43bn in 2021. The middle-fare Discovery and highbrow Warner hardly made a natural fit. Discovery’s net debt to ebitda ratio is at an elevated five times.
That looks precarious. The new company admits to some painful integration issues, particularly on the way in which new shows and movies are released. Warner Bros Discovery shares have already lost 42 per cent this year. Still, that looks better than Netflix, the worst performer among the group in 2022.
Meanwhile, the sellers have returned to their roots. AT&T has retreated to its cash flow-rich, legacy mobile phone service and broadband businesses. Fox has focused on its traditional legacy linear pay-TV networks in news and sports. While sports rights remain expensive, affiliate fees and advertising have proved surprisingly resilient.
For the likes of Disney and Discovery, standing still was never an option. But the streaming battles they have joined may make them think twice about the cost of expansion.
British energy bills forecast to soar above £5,000 next year
Latest dire warning intensifies pressure on the government to ease the cost of living crisis
British households face average annual energy bills surging above £5,000 next year, according to the latest forecast, heaping further pressure on the government to intervene to ease the spiralling cost of living crisis.
The warning from consultancy Auxilione follows a steep rise in wholesale British gas prices this week and came as electricity generators met with ministers in Downing Street on Thursday to discuss a response to the impact of rising wholesale energy prices driven primarily by Russia’s squeeze on gas supplies to Europe.
After the meeting, outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson said the government would “keep urging the electricity sector to continue working on ways we can ease the cost of living pressure and to invest further and faster in British energy security”.
But the government has faced accusations of failing to act quickly enough with no decisions expected until the Tory party leadership race appoints either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak prime minister next month. No concrete proposals emerged from the meeting on Thursday.
One industry figure who attended insisted there was “no complacency” among participants but acknowledged that proposals to help mitigate the crisis needed to now “be worked up with a sense of urgency”.
The prospect of a windfall tax on electricity generators, some of whom have enjoyed bumper profits from renewables and nuclear generation, has resurfaced this week.
RWE, the German company that generates about 15 per cent of the UK’s electricity, warned however that any government action must be “appropriate and proportionate.” It has previously warned its planned £15bn investment in UK renewables could be under threat.
“Any insufficiently considered intervention when the energy sector is at a critical juncture — could be counter-productive and carries risks of unintended consequences,” RWE said in a statement following the meeting.
Others have called for more radical solutions as the UK faces the prospect of a deep recession. Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has suggested the government may need to eventually nationalise parts of the sector if they cannot lower prices.
Dale Vince, the founder of Ecotricity, a green energy generator and retailer, who was not at the meeting, said the government needed a “proper windfall tax” and to “ideally find £40bn, one-tenth of the pandemic funding, to get the country through the winter energy crisis”.
Vince also suggested the government should “impose a price cap on North Sea gas and oil” producers.
The energy price cap, which governs gas and electricity bills for the vast majority of UK households, has already jumped to £1,971 from £1,277 this year. Earlier this week, another forecast suggested it would hit £4,420 next April.
Auxilione said it expected regulator Ofgem to set the price cap at “just over £3,600” when it announces the results of its next review, now held every three months, on August 26. That rise would take effect in October before the cap was expected to exceed £5,000 in the first half of 2023, the consultancy added.
The Auxilione forecast follows warnings of a severe drought affecting shipments of coal and other commodities on the river Rhine in Germany, a key artery for supplying power stations. Norway has also signalled it will restrict electricity exports.
Business and energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng — who is widely tipped to be the next chancellor if leadership frontrunner Liz Truss becomes prime minister — is looking at options to decouple electricity prices unassociated with gas generation.
Kwarteng was also at the meeting along with chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and companies including RWE, EDF, Centrica, Drax and ScottishPower.
Former chancellor Rishi Sunak, who is running against Truss, has accused his rival of being slow to appreciate how worried households are about the prospect of soaring bills. He has promised to expand a £15bn support package he announced in May when bills were forecast to reach about £2,800 in October.
Truss has said she favours tax cuts over “handouts” but has left open the door to additional support.
Auxilione said there appeared to be “little appreciation” in government “for just how impossible” it would be to lower prices. “Energy companies and the government have little control over this in such a globally influenced market,” it added.
Ofgem has cautioned about forecasts for the price cap given the volatility in energy prices.
Why CryptoPunks and Bored Apes Are Fashion
NFT profile pictures signal tastes and affiliations, have aesthetic value and set and follow trends. In other words, they’re fashion.
Digital fashion is already widespread. It can just be hard to spot because it doesn’t always look like clothes.
I’m not talking about the obvious examples in gaming environments like Fortnite and Roblox, where millions of users spend real money on virtual shirts, hats and other digitised imitations of stuff you can buy in the real world. I’m talking about the NFT profile-picture collections, or PFPs, like CryptoPunks, Bored Apes and others that have been spreading among the crypto faithful on sites like Twitter and Discord for the past couple years.
Many in fashion dismiss them as crude and silly. Maybe they can be called collectables — even art — but not fashion. Yet they arguably share enough characteristics to classify them that way. Bobby Hundreds, whose streetwear brand, The Hundreds, is also behind the Adam Bomb Squad NFT collection, has previously made this case. So did Gala Marija Vrbanic, who worked with physical fashion before founding her digital line, Tribute Brand, when I spoke with her recently.
PFPs serve as a stylised visual representation of their owner. We put them on like digital clothes so we’re not naked, virtually speaking. They signal tastes and affiliations. They aren’t purely practical and have some sort of aesthetic value, dubious as it may be (though the same is true for plenty of physical clothing). They even follow trends; some projects come into style while others go out. In other words, fashion.
Thinking of digital fashion this way expands the variety of forms it can take. Even fashion’s boundary-pushing designers haven’t typically made that leap yet. Many brands have adopted a conservative approach, like Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne when they created replicas of their garments for Meta’s avatars, though that seems to have been Meta’s preference in this instance. But why just create little virtual sneakers for an anthropomorphic avatar when the avatar could be a sneaker itself — or something else entirely?
“With digital fashion, its natural habitat is on screen,” Vrbanic told me, not the body, raising the question of whether legacy brands might be out of their depth in this world.
Vrbanic didn’t necessarily mean virtual fashion needs to, or even should, ignore our physical selves. Among the products her brand creates are augmented-reality filters that overlay digital garments on the user’s body, at least the image of it on the screen of their smartphone. Customers use them to post on social media, where they serve the purpose of traditional cloth-and-thread fashion: getting likes.
But digital fashion is a different medium. That restricts it in some ways. A very large share of digital fashion just doesn’t look very good, in part because of technological barriers or the limits of the virtual environments it exists in, and unless you have a gigantic phone or computer monitor, you’ll generally see it in a fairly small format that isn’t suited to conveying detail. But it creates freedoms too, like being able to work outside the usual material reality.
Gucci leaned into this freedom when it created its fantasy garden for Roblox last year. Etro, by contrast, did not when it showed a collection at Metaverse Fashion Week in March that offered lacklustre digital dupes of its physical clothes. Brands that just try to replicate the physical world virtually in their experiments in digital fashion seem set to struggle because they’re not adapting it for the screen.
Fashion companies are still learning how to show up in these digital spaces. It seems likely they will eventually come to understand what works and what doesn’t. The bigger players can also hire or acquire talent to help them, like Nike did when it bought RTFKT.
One limitation on the growth of this more expansive idea of digital fashion — one not limited to digital clothes — might be users themselves. Last year, when I spoke with Michigan State University’s Rabindra Ratan, who has studied the use of avatars in virtual worlds, he pointed out that most people tend to choose avatars that resemble them. One of the most-customised features is hair, he said, which is also one of the most customisable parts of our identities in the real world.
Many people seem likely to want more faithful digital versions of themselves and will want to dress them in digital clothes that look like physical clothes. Even on Twitter, plenty of users opt for profile pictures that are just pictures of themselves.
People’s choices probably also depend on the environment. Someone might want to present one way on mostly static, two-dimensional Twitter and another way completely in an immersive 3D space.
But fashion today is less about prescribing how someone should or shouldn’t look and more about the choice to represent yourself how you want. The same is true online.