>>> TSLA - Files to sell 2.1M shares (1.6% shares outstanding) - Intend to use t

Files to sell 2.1M shares (1.6% shares outstanding) 
- Intend to use the net proceeds from this offering to accelerate the growth of our business in the U.S. and internationally, including the growth of our stores, service centers, Supercharger network and the Tesla Energy business, and for the development and production of Model 3, the development of the Tesla Gigafactory and other general corporate purposes.
- We estimate that our net proceeds from the sale of the shares of common stock in this offering will be approximately $492.6 million, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses that we must pay.

(EXane) Luxury : Quantifying the share price downside for luxury stocks

Quantifying the share price downside for luxury stocks from the PBoC decision

* The impact of RMB devaluation depends on eight major variables:
1) The extent of RMB devaluation. We develop here several RMB devaluation scenarios: -2%, -5%, -10% and -20%; 
2) Exposure to sales in China. The companies in our coverage differ dramatically in terms of sales exposure to Mainland China (from 2% to 15%); 
3) Luxury consumers’ price elasticity. We have assumed price elasticity from 0.5 (at the high-end and the accessible extremes) to 1.0 (mid-price); 
4) Chinese spend repatriation. We have assumed that a third of lost Chinese luxury spend abroad resurfaces in China; 
5) Translation impact. We have obviously factored in lower FX support in reported sales and quantified cost RMB
exposure; 
6) RMB cost exposure. RMB devaluation is a net positive for companies exposed to RMB COGS, as well as for those who have material RMB SG&A exposure; 
7) Price cuts in China during 1H15. All else being equal, companies that have not cut prices in China should be at an advantage; 
8) Remedial actions. We have not factored in remedial actions, so investors may appreciate the "raw" impacts of RMB devaluation.

* We draw three major conclusions from our quantification exercise
1) RMB devaluation is a net negative for most luxury players, but share price moves on the back of it seem overdone. When fully factored in, moderate RMB devaluation has a very low single-digit negative impact on luxury players’ profits; 
2) Consumer luxury spend price elasticity is a key assumption in our model. Chinese consumers spend less because products in Europe appear more expensive, without luxury players getting any benefit in volume terms; 
3) Not having made price cuts in China is a net plus. At first sight, LVMH and Swatch look better off. By contrast,
companies that have cut prices, like Burberry and CFR, have a higher hurdle to clear.

>>> Opera Software confirms that it has seen more takeover interest recently, co

Opera Software confirms that it has seen more takeover interest recently, could be priced at NOK 80-90 per share
Opera Software, the Norwegian IT company, has seen more takeover interest over the last few months than earlier, according to Dagens Naeringsliv.

The Norwegian business daily cited Chairman Sverre Munck, who said that the company has been approached earlier, but that interest has been stronger lately. Several companies are either interested in parts or all of Opera, he said. He pointed to user base, technology, the company's relationship with operators as well as its US market share as areas of interest.

Meanwhile, a Fondsfinans analyst said that Opera may be worth a takeover price of around NOK 80-90 (EUR 8.76-9.86) per share and she pointed to Cheeta Mobile, Baidu and Microsoft as possible bidders.

A Carnegie analyst said that Opera's status as an all-round supplier means that it may see more interest from larger bidders. He also said that Opera's management has said earlier that it does not wish to break the company up.

The item noted that American companies Twitter, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Microsoft as well as Chinese players such as Baidu, Tencent, Cheetah Mobile and Alibaba are seen as possible bidders by various analysts.

Dagens Naeringsliv

(BFW) Tiberius Active Commodity Op Fund Falls 10.68% in July

BN 08/13 09:46 *TIBERIUS ACTIVE COMMODITY OP FUND FALLS 10.68% IN JULY
Tiberius Active Commodity Op Fund Falls 10.68% in July
2015-08-13 10:07:03.364 GMT


By Claudia Carpenter
(Bloomberg) -- Commodities seen regaining investor interest
“given extreme relative price discrepancies between commodities
on the one hand and bonds and equity markets on the other
hand,” Tiberius says in report e-mailed Thursday.

* Any news of severe supply shocks could trigger short squeeze
in industrial metals because investors are “quite short”
sector
* Almost 50% of nickel productin is at breakeven or loss
making
* Tin seen underperforming in medium term as long as
Indonesian smelters export beyond self-made restrictions
* Odds of record cocoa harveset in Ivory Coast for 2015-16 as
farmers take better care of crop


For Related News and Information:
First Word scrolling panel: {FIRST<GO>}
First Word newswire: {NH BFW<GO>}

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Claudia Carpenter at +971-4-364-1029 or
ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net

>>> EXpedia - Expands termination date of Orbitz, Xeta merger to November 12th -

Expands termination date of Orbitz, Xeta merger to November 12th - filing Expedia elected to extend the termination date of the Merger Agreement from August 12, 2015 until November 12, 2015 pursuant to Section 7.1(d) of the Merger Agreement. No other provisions of the Merger Agreement were amended, and the Merger Agreement remains in full force and effect.

The proposed merger also remains subject to the expiration or termination of the applicable waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended, as well as other customary conditions-

(RedBurn) Rolls Royce Downgraded to Neutral

Margin disappointments and increased earnings volatility in Rolls-Royce’s Civil Aerospace business bring the pricing of the backlog into question. Ceteris paribus, margins will improve from now, but the competitive threat from GE Aviation cannot be ignored. Nor can the long-term risk that Rolls-Royce may attempt to re-enter the narrow-body market. We downgrade to Neutral.

* Under pressure. Civil Aerospace margins will rise naturally over the next five years, but accelerating cost-cutting will be difficult. Much rests on the success of the Trent XWB. Concerns over the pricing of long-term contracts are difficult to address.
* The GE factor. GE Aviation’s scale and margins (Fig 1) are not easily replicable. The same positive dynamics that could boost Rolls-Royce’s Civil Aerospace margins will give GE Aviation the firepower to become an aggressive market leader.
* The narrow-body conundrum. Re-entering the narrow-body market would be expensive and difficult, but this is a large segment of the market Rolls-Royce cannot ignore. A decision is not imminent, but this could necessitate significant investment just at the point when Rolls-Royce starts to generate a meaningful amount of cash.
* What is Rolls-Royce worth? Rolls-Royce is very expensive on a multiples basis, with no meaningful recovery in EPS or FCF until 2019. Fair value now is 850-900p, based on the mid-point between embedded value (930p) and P/E approaches (750p at 15x 50p). Rolls-Royce’s value to a trade buyer would be materially higher
(>1,250p), but we view a takeover as possible (though unlikely).

(TechCrunch) Ohm Is A Smarter, Lighter Car Battery That Works With Your Existing

Ohm Is A Smarter, Lighter Car Battery That Works With Your Existing Car Link : {http://tcrn.ch/1L7vgXq}

While you probably don’t think about them until you have to, automotive batteries — the chunky boxes that helps start your car’s gas engine — are pretty terrible.

They die without warning, leaving you stranded. They weigh as much as a small child, making them tough to swap and eating into your gas mileage. They’re filled with garbage materials that are terrible for the planet.

And yet, the technology behind them hasn’t really changed much in the past few decades.

Ohm, part of YC’s Summer 2015 class, wants to change that. It’s a lighter, smarter, drop-in replacement for your existing battery.

Most automotive batteries weigh around 40 pounds, with lead plates accounting for over half of that weight.

Ohm gets the job done while coming in at just 6 pounds.

How?

Instead of lead plates, Ohm brings in a more modern, two-part system: an EDLC supercapacitor capable of dumping enough energy to start your engine, and a set of smaller batteries (LiFePO4, which contain no toxic heavy metals) to keep things powered when the engine is off.

The physical footprint for Ohm’s battery rig ends up being considerably smaller than its lead-acid counterpart — but as they want this thing to work in existing cars without bouncing around under the hood, they’ve tucked it into a case that makes Ohm roughly the same size as any other automotive battery. (Specifically, it’s built to fit into the same cavity as a Group 35 battery)

Instead of wasting that extra space, they’re using it to bring another trick into the mix: smarts.

We all know the pain of leaving your lights on and waking up to a dead battery. Ohm’s built-in circuitry monitors the supercapacitor’s potential output; if it’s ever about to reach the point that it’ll no longer be able to start your car, it’ll just turn itself off. Your lights will fade out and the radio will go quiet — but once you turn the key, everything will spring right back to life, no jump start required.

Oh, and its lifespan (7 years) is about twice that of a lead-acid battery (3-4 years).

So what’s the downside? There has to be a downside, right?

There’s one: you can’t run your lights and/or stereo as long with your engine turned off. Ohm’s battery reserve comes in at 10 amp hours; most lead-acid car batteries come in at about 45 amp hours. If you can run your stereo with your engine off for three hours on your current battery, you’d be able to run it on Ohm for less than an hour.

Thanks to the aforementioned built-in smarts, though, you’ll never run it so long that you end up with a dead battery.

The company tells me that it’s aiming for a price point of around $200 — putting it on the high end of what you’d normally pay for a battery ($120-$180) if you wandered into your local auto parts store. Given that Ohm’s lifespan is about twice as long, though, that pricing ends up working out.

But do people plan that far ahead when it comes to things like car batteries? Many, if not most, just say “I don’t know, give me whatever is affordable and works in my car.”

With that in mind, Ohm is focusing on the performance car market first. Those are the guys that’ll rip out their passenger seats to gain a tiny performance gain on the track — so the idea of shaving another ~30 pounds off their ride is probably a welcome one.

Interested in learning more? Ohm is currently in private beta testing, with around a dozen units out in the wild. They plan to roll out crowdfunding campaign in the next month or so.

FT : SoftBank boosts Sprint stake to underscore commitment


SoftBank has spent $87m to buy additional shares in Sprint in another affirmation of founder Masayoshi Son’s commitment to his struggling US wireless carrier.
The purchase came as shares in Sprint have nearly halved since the Japanese telecoms and internet group acquired a controlling stake in 2013. Turnround efforts have been slow, with Sprint recently slipping to fourth place among the major US mobile operators.

SoftBank on Thursday said it had acquired another 22.9m shares in Sprint over the past three days, raising its stake from 79.4 per cent to 79.9 per cent. The company said it does not plan to increase its stake to 85 per cent or more, at which point Sprint would become eligible for delisting.
Shares in Softbank fell as much as 3.6 per cent in Tokyo following the announcement. The company recently announced plans to spend nearly $1bn to buy back up to 1.68 per cent of its shares, which Mr Son said were undervalued.
Mr Son acquired Sprint with the intention of merging the group with T-Mobile US but his plan was thwarted by US regulators. Given the tough prospects of reviving the loss-making unit as a standalone group, investors and analysts have long speculated Mr Son would seek to sell the loss-making unit.
Over the past couple of weeks Mr Son has made repeated pledges to stand by Sprint, even making a rare appearance on Sprint’s earnings call. He admitted he had considered selling Sprint at one point but insisted he is now confident in Sprint’s turnround plan.
“It was a long and dark tunnel, but I’m seeing light at the end of it,” Mr Son said last week after SoftBank reported quarterly results, predicting that he would be able to turn round Sprint in about two years.
As part of its new strategy Sprint plans to free up cash to fund improvements to its network by setting up two standalone equipment leasing companies — one for customer handsets and another for network equipment.
That will allow Sprint to remove the significant costs of procuring equipment from its own balance sheet.

In addition to reducing operating expenses, Sprint and SoftBank engineers are working on revamping the carrier’s network, Mr Son said, although few details have been disclosed on what the improvement would entail.
For its fiscal first quarter, Sprint reported a loss per share of 1 cent, compared with the 7-cent loss analysts were expecting, while revenues of $8bn were about $300m shy of Wall Street expectations.
The company lost 12,000 so-called postpaid customers, who are billed for their service on a recurring monthly basis — a big improvement on the previous quarter, when it lost 201,000, and on the same period of last year when it haemorrhaged 620,000 of those subscribers.
The rate at which postpaid customers are leaving the company, or “churn”, fell to a record low of 1.56 per cent. Still, its total number of subscribers fell below that of T-Mobile.

FT : Tax authorities urged to be more vigilant over the super-rich


Revenue authorities need to be “vigilant” in monitoring the super-rich, according to research that called on many of them to improve their scrutiny of their richest taxpayers.
The study by the Paris-based OECD is a further sign of the pressure on tax departments to squeeze more revenue out of wealthy individuals.

Cash-strapped governments are already clamping down on evasion and avoidance to shore up their public finances and respond to public anger over widening economic inequality and alleged tax dodging.
But the OECD said less than a third of the 56 tax authorities it surveyed had set up a dedicated unit to oversee the tax affairs of the wealthy, which it described as “a surprising outcome given the very significant growth in the estimated numbers and wealth of these taxpayers.”
It urged tax departments to consider overhauling their organisational structure “to ensure that this segment of taxpayers receives the appropriate level of scrutiny to detect and deter non-compliance”.
Tax advisers have warned their wealthy clients that they are in the sights of tax authorities. EY, the professional services firm, recently urged them to adopt a “sense of urgency” over structures that might have been tolerated five years ago but were now potentially unacceptable. It said “the risks of non-compliance — and of ensuing penalties, investigations or legal action — have never been greater.”
Wealthy citizens are increasingly being singled out for special treatment because of the complexity of their tax affairs and their scope for aggressive tax planning. The crackdown on the wealthiest taxpayers also reflects their growing importance to the public finances.
Research published by Capgemini, the consulting firm, and RBC Wealth Management found that the wealth of people with more than $1m to invest had grown by nearly $20tn over five years to more than $50tn in 2013. The rich account for a disproportionate share of income tax revenues. In the UK, for example, about half of income tax revenues come from just 3 per cent of adults.
The OECD highlighted Australia, Greece, Indonesia, the UK and United States as having relatively large units devoted to wealthy taxpayers. Greece set up an audit centre to deal exclusively with wealthy taxpayers in mid-2013 and its staff of 125 brought in €73m that year. The UK, which had the largest unit, brought in £222m of extra revenue in 2013 as a result of 375 staff looking at the tax affairs of 6,200 people with assets of more than £20m.
EY said wealthy individuals could actually benefit if tax authorities put more resources into managing their tax affairs. By showing they were willing to build a more constructive, open relationship, wealthy taxpayers could benefit from a reduced risk of tax controversy, lower compliance costs and a better understanding of the fast-changing legislative environment, it said.
George Hodgson, deputy chief executive of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, a professional body for advisers to wealthy families, said the UK’s high net worth unit had got off to a good start “both in terms of raising revenues but also offering a good service to taxpayers whose affairs are often complex”.
Tax rates have also gone up for many wealthy people. From 2010 to 2013 six or seven EU member states raised their top rates each year, although the pace of change slackened in 2004 with only Finland and Sweden increasing their rates, according to official statistics.

NY Post : American Apparel mulls bankruptcy filing amid unrest

APP US - 37.4% yest

Things have gone from bad to worse at American Apparel.
The embattled retailer, fighting labor unrest and a dwindling cash supply, said Tuesday its net loss swelled to $19.4 million in the second quarter from $16.2 million a year ago amid a 17 percent decline in revenue.
The Los Angeles-based apparel maker had just $13 million in cash available on June 30 — having burned through roughly $23 million during the second quarter.
A Chapter 11 filing is not out of the question, the company all but acknowledged in a regulatory filing.
American Apparel, whose shares have tumbled 76 percent over the past year, to 21 cents at the close of trading on Tuesday, has “begun discussions with key financial stakeholders to analyze potential strategic and financial alternatives … including restructuring and recapitalization transactions,” it said in a short form quarterly filing. Its full quarterly filing will be delayed, it said.
Dov Charney, its founder, was ousted as CEO in December. The company faces some 20 lawsuits related to his firing. Current management is battling to right the ship.
American Apparel said it is in violation of the covenants of its revolving credit line with Capital One and there is no guarantee it will reach a deal with the lender.
At the same time, Standard General, a hedge fund with a significant stake in American Apparel, is in talks to purchase Capital One’s debt, according to the filing.
Separately, there is some labor unrest at the struggling chain. Three employees were fired recently. They had been organizing their co-workers, including the newly elected president of the union, Stephanie Padilha, company documents obtained by The Post show.