Yahoo Finance Trending tickers: Amazon | National Grid | Glencore | Hermès
Investor updates on some of the key stocks on Friday
Amazon (AMZN)
Amazon will not be left behind in the latest arms race over artificial intelligence (AI) and has announced it is “investing heavily” in the technology behind ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.
The online retail giant announced it's releasing an AI platform for businesses called Amazon Bedrock, which will compete with enterprise offerings from OpenAI and others in the generative AI space.
Bedrock is a suite of generative AI tools that can help Amazon Web Service customers — businesses who run their operations on Amazon's data servers — build chatbots, generate and summarize text, and make and classify images based on prompts.
Amazon is betting on generative AI, and believes the technology will be a "big deal" for its business going forward, CEO Andy Jassy said Thursday.
“We have been working on our own LLMs [large language models] for a while now, believe it will transform and improve virtually every customer experience, and will continue to invest substantially in these models across all of our consumer, seller, brand, and creator experiences,” Jassy wrote in his letter to shareholders.
"I could write an entire letter on LLMs and generative AI as I think they will be that transformative, but I'll leave that for a future letter," Jassy added.
"Let's just say that LLMs and generative AI are going to be a big deal for customers, our shareholders and Amazon."
National Grid (NG.L)
National Grid is dragging the FTSE this Friday having shed 0.64% after it said new government tax treatments are expected to have a "net adverse impact" on its underlying earnings in years to come.
The group forecast its earnings growth would be towards the lower end of its outlook range for the 2022-2026 period, due to lower revenues from its electricity transmission and distribution businesses.
The UK's introduction of "full expensing" tax relief for capital from April 1 this year to the end of March 2026 would result in lower cash tax payable, hitting underlying earnings from 2024 to 2026.
Read more: Bank of England expects inflation to fall as pound hits 10-month high
Despite that, National Grid said it still expected to deliver underlying earnings per share growth of 6% to 8% annually for 2022-2026, although towards the lower end of that range.
Glencore (GLEN.L)
Glencore shares have surged 8% this week after the Swiss miner announced its bid to buy Teck Resources (TECK) in a deal that would create two commodity giants.
The Swiss mining giant's unsolicited bid for the Canadian copper and zinc miner would involve combining and spinning off the thermal and steel-making coal businesses of both companies.
Glencore’s plan was to merge both companies and then separate their operations to create two standalone businesses, MetalsCo and CoalCo. The former would be listed in London and the latter in the US, with the focus of each company flagged in their proposed trading names.
With copper mining expected to make up roughly half its profits, this deal would create a red-metal giant poised to take advantage of a green commodities supercycle.
Glencore revised its $23bn bid to buy Teck Resources after some investors in the Canadian miner balked at the idea of owning a business that just produced coal. It still got rejected.
Read more: Why is everyone talking about Glencore stock?
Teck told Glencore that if it wished to continue deal talks in future, the Swiss miner should first spin off its thermal coal business — which is the world’s most profitable — then come back for discussions.
“Now, pre-separation, is not the time to explore a transaction of this nature,” Teck chairman Emeritus Norman Keevil said in a statement.
Teck is already planning to separate its metals business and its steelmaking coal business, a proposal that goes to shareholder vote on April 26.
“Glencore acknowledges that certain Teck investors may prefer a full coal exit and others may not desire thermal coal exposure,” it said in a statement.
Hermès (RMS.PA)
Hermès has reported a jump in quarterly sales as the maker of the luxurious Kelly bag cashed in on strong demand from Chinese customers.
Sales at the Birkin bag maker rose 23% in the first three months of the year, outstripping analysts' expectations. Shares rose 1.20% in early trading in Paris.
Hermès finance chief Eric du Halgouet told journalists store traffic in the US, where rival LVMH earlier this week flagged softer demand for fashion, leather goods and jewellery, continued to rise.
“What we’re seeing in the United States is globally an increase in (store) traffic, the trends we’ve seen in April remain favourable, with, again, very dynamic traffic,” he said, according to Reuters.
“We obviously remain vigilant as far as macro trends are concerned... but we have not seen a slowdown so far.”
Prices have risen around 7% early this year, against a usual annual rise of up to 3%, but wealthy fans in China and Europe ignored the cost of living crisis hitting most households and continued to spend.
Its Birkin handbags go for over $10,000 retail and even higher in the resale market.
Asia excluding Japan was up 23%, “driven by a very good Chinese new year”, with Singapore, Thailand and Australia also performing well.
Japan recorded a sustained growth of 26%, “based on the loyalty of local customers”.
Europe excluding France was up 21% while France rose 28%. The growth in the Continent was helped by stronger performances in the UK and Italy, “driven by the increase in tourist flows”.
Du Halgouet said tourist flows from mainland China had resumed to Hong Kong and Macau, boosting business there, as well as Singapore and Australia, and expected Chinese shoppers to return slowly to Europe towards the end of the year.
Watch: Amazon announces new AI platform, Amazon Bedrock
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