IBM - International Business Machines Corporation
| Previous close | 143.62 |
| Open | 144.32 |
| Bid | 143.55 x 1100 |
| Ask | 143.95 x 800 |
| Day's range | 143.26 - 144.65 |
| 52-week range | 105.94 - 154.36 |
| Volume | 2,063,223 |
| Avg. volume | 3,778,844 |
| Market cap | 127.274B |
| Beta (3Y monthly) | 1.56 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 14.83 |
| EPS (TTM) | 9.69 |
| Earnings date | 16 Oct 2019 |
| Forward dividend & yield | 6.48 (4.51%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 2019-08-08 |
| 1y target est | 153.05 |
- Yahoo Finance UK
How this IBM boss is encouraging staff to bring '150% of themselves' to work
'Be the change you want to see in the world,' IBM Asia Pacific chief executive Harriet Green said.
- Yahoo Finance
New IBM mainframe can process 1 trillion web transactions a day
IBM is out with its newest mainframe - z15. Yahoo Finance sat down with Tom Rosamilia, the Senior Vice President of IBM Systems and Chairman of IBM North America to hear how it'll change the industry.
- Bloomberg
Andrew Yang Brings Silicon Valley’s Upstart Spirit to 2020 Bid
(Bloomberg) -- It’s a classic Silicon Valley story: A shoestring operation disrupts the way business has traditionally been done, smashing experts’ expectations while drawing wary glances from sober-minded analysts.Except this time the product isn’t some new gadget or app, it’s a presidential candidate. Since he began his unorthodox campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination, New York entrepreneur Andrew Yang has broken with a lot of traditional advice about campaign proposals, fundraising and public relations. And so far, it’s kind of worked.Endorsements from big names like Elon Musk, along with many small individual donations from software engineers—among the biggest givers to his campaign—have catapulted him into the middle of the winnowing pack of remaining Democratic candidates. He’s managed to win over the tech industry’s support while making its negative impact on society his central focus, and he’ll be on the debate stage on Thursday night, trying to convince everyone he can fix it. An outsider with zero political experience, Yang has outlasted a senator, two governors and three members of the House in the crowded Democratic field. He’s currently beating two senators, former liberal heartthrob Beto O’Rourke and Tom Steyer, the billionaire burning through his own cash while floundering in the polls. And Yang’s fundraising and poll numbers were strong enough to qualify for nationally televised debates three times. But it’s the next phase that proves trickiest, in both tech and politics. Yang, who is currently at 2.5% in a Real Clear Politics aggregation of polls, needs to scale up quickly, building more name recognition and financial support before the primary season starts. In short, it’s time for Yang to go public. His plan to do so involves a campaign centered on one big idea: a $1,000 check sent monthly to every U.S. citizen over the age of 18, no strings attached. But he’s also touting more than 150 other proposals such as legalizing marijuana, creating a postal banking system, paying college athletes, eliminating the penny and making Puerto Rico a state. It’s those ideas that make more traditional pundits view Yang as a fringe candidate—Yang is undoubtedly the first presidential campaign to have taken a stance on circumcision, even if he later backtracked on it. But an embrace of oddball causes may also be part of the secret to Yang’s success so far.Connor Farrell, a progressive fundraising consultant for Left Rising in Washington, D.C., said that Yang’s campaign features the kind of niche ideas with passionate fan bases that drive online donations. Those voters can be reached much more efficiently through free viral videos and memes than can, say, potential supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden who prioritize electability. And they’re easier to convert into small-dollar donors who can be tapped again and again, Farrell said.“Candidates who advertise about a specific issue have an easier time targeting the people that are likely to give to them,” he said. “You’ll make more money spending less money.” Yang recently sat down with Bloomberg in a cramped conference room in San Francisco to talk about his ideas. Surrounded by stacks of his book The War on Normal People, the former tech entrepreneur quickly launched into his case that the tech sector bears responsibility for many of America’s problems.Retail jobs vaporizing and shopping malls closing? That’s Amazon. Suicide and mental health issues on the rise? That’s Facebook. Journalism on the decline? Google’s ad network carries a bunch of responsibility for that. And, he argues, there’s worse to come, as automation comes for clerical, call center, retail, food preparation and trucking jobs. “It’s not immigrants causing these problems,” Yang said, in counterpoint to President Donald Trump. “It’s technology.”And then he turns to his solution, which his campaign calls the Freedom Dividend but Yang informally describes as a “tech check.” To help pay for its estimated cost of about $255 billion per month, he wants to ditch corporate taxes on earnings and instead institute a value-added tax, or VAT, a tax on consumption. The VAT is used by a majority of developed counties, but is considered a non-starter in the U.S. for both parties: Republicans look at it as a tax hike, and Democrats believe it’s regressive because poor people’s consumption represents more of their income. Yang argues that if the tax were set at 10% (or about half the amount Europe charges) it would easily cover his $12,000 annual stipend for every American.While Yang believes the tech sector has created a lot of problems, he also thinks it’s uniquely positioned to solve some. Yang wants to allow voting by mobile phone using blockchain security. He favors net neutrality, letting consumers have a property right to their own data and increased investment in quantum computing and encryption technologies. He wants to bolster artificial intelligence to remain competitive with China and create a new agency to monitor the addictive nature of smartphones and social media.And, more importantly, he doesn’t rail against the companies’ creators themselves. It’s a neat trick: He vilifies the effects of innovation while absolving the innovators, saying that’s a job for government regulators. “This is a natural place where the government needs to come in and set parameters,” Yang told Bloomberg. “If you ask [tech companies] to self-regulate, they would literally be doing their shareholders a massive disservice if they were to scale back in any meaningful way.”To help garner support for such policies, Yang wants to create an agency to educate elected officials on artificial intelligence, data privacy, online ad networks and other technology topics they often don’t understand but are expected to craft laws to regulate. Such misunderstanding, he suggests, is what led candidate Elizabeth Warren to propose a break up of big tech earlier this year. “She’s recommending 20th century solutions to 21st century problems,” he said of Warren. “It’s not like breaking Google up into four mini-Googles would somehow improve the marketplace because no one wants to use the fourth best search engine. There’s a reason why we’re not using Bing.” Yang has early roots in the tech industry. He grew up in upstate New York, a self-described nerd who often spent more time with computers than people. His father, who worked at International Business Machines Corp. and generated 69 patents, encouraged his son’s early interest in technology. After Yang earned a law degree from Columbia University, he found he didn’t like being a lawyer and launched a startup allowing people to donate to celebrities’ favorite charities (it failed), then he drifted to a health care startup and eventually joined an online test prep company as an employee. By the time test titan Kaplan Test Prep bought it a few years later in 2009, Yang had risen to become its chief executive. He used part of his windfall to start a non-profit called Venture For America, matching recent college graduates with tech startups in sometimes-overlooked cities like St. Louis, Detroit and Pittsburgh.The people most likely to donate to Yang’s campaign have job titles like programmer, developer and software engineer. Many of them have jobs at Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., but Yang also has a steady stream of contributions from workers with the same jobs at companies around the country, such as Capital One Financial Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Walmart Inc.He's also gotten support from tech workers at small startups, ranging from companies developing artificial intelligence platforms to apps that teach "Unified Mindfulness," a meditation technique.Workers at tech firms contributed $321,664 to Yang through the end of June, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. That was less than the $1.3 million the sector gave to Pete Buttigieg, tops among Democratic presidential candidates, and about as much as Joe Biden, who is polling far higher but whose late entry into the race gave him less time to raise money.Like most of his rivals, Yang's big three locations for raising money are the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas, but tech enclaves rank higher on his list than they do for other candidates. Seattle is fourth and the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area—the heart of Silicon Valley—is seventh.Richard Shank is one of those donors. A software developer in Beaverton, Ore., he was working on a project to automate school scheduling and listening to a Ray Kurzweil audiobook a few years ago when he had a realization that automation was going to cause a lot more disruption to the economy. After reading more on the issue, Shank, 50, settled on the universal basic income—sometimes called UBI, or in Yang’s case, the “tech check”—as a solution. He backed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 in part because he’d said favorable things about the idea, but when he heard Yang on Sam Harris’ podcast, Shank had finally found his candidate.“I was immediately sold,” he said. “UBI is probably the single most important issue in this race.” Shank listened to the audiobook of The War on Normal People and checked out every podcast interview with the Yang that he could find. He sets aside a portion of each paycheck to send to Yang’s campaign, and is about $1,000 toward his goal of hitting the Federal Election Commission maximum of $2,800.Neil Malhotra, a political economy professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, has studied political attitudes in Silicon Valley and the tech sector. One study of tech founders in Silicon Valley found that they favor low regulation to allow businesses to innovate but they also support redistributing wealth and are liberal on social issues. A separate study found similar attitudes among computer science majors at Stanford.“If you look at the Yang campaign, it’s very consistent with what we found,” Malhotra said. Yang may not like social media’s effects on society, but his campaign is certainly benefiting from them. Online, fans have blended his image with funny and sometimes outrageous messages that spread fast on Twitter and Reddit as well as more controversial sites like 4chan. Yang’s campaign staff say they try to keep tabs on the ever-multiplying memes, but have no control over what gets published, where or how fast it spreads. “As important as social media and everything is, the core driver is still email and fundraising,” said Digital Director Eric Ming, who leads the campaign’s efforts in social media, digital advertising, email and online engagement. He said he and his team don’t generally make memes, but see the power of the images in real time.When a meme strikes a chord, like the image of a boyfriend doing a double take on a new girl (Yang) while walking with his girlfriend (Trump), it spreads quickly, contributing to the candidate’s digital fame. One clip of Yang dancing the Cupid Shuffle in a women’s exercise class got 1.6 million views. A slow-motion video of Yang standing barefoot on his deck kicking off a water bottle cap without knocking over the bottle got 1.4 million. Another video shows supporters hoisting him above their heads, enabling him to crowdsurf his political rally like a rockstar.They may seem trivial, but like any media appearance, viral clips can drive voters to learn more about the candidate. These images play an outsized role in driving political decisions, according to Joel Penney, an associate professor at Montclair State University and author of The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age.Penney described memes as amateur-produced political ads that played a “massive” role in helping Trump win the last election. Their power, he says, lies in their simplicity. It’s an easy way of consuming often complex information that’s easy to share, is topical and hits emotional triggers.“Memes get votes,” Penney said. “It’s not a one-to-one correlation, but it’s absolutely what’s shaping meaning and perceptions.” (Updates with donation information in the 24th paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected a cost estimate for a universal basic income.)\--With assistance from Bill Allison.To contact the authors of this story: Lizette Chapman in San Francisco at lchapman19@bloomberg.netRyan Beckwith in Washington at rbeckwith3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Brad StoneFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- PR Newswire
IBM Unveils z15 With Industry-First Data Privacy Capabilities
Designed for Hybrid Multicloud Security, Cloud-Native App Development with New Instant Recovery Feature ARMONK, New York , Sept. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM ) today announced IBM z15™ , a new ...
- Bloomberg
The Trade War Spurs China’s Technology Innovators Into Overdrive
(Bloomberg) -- Sign up for Next China, a weekly email on where the nation stands now and where it's going next.In Shenzhen’s glitzy financial district, a five-year-old outfit creates a 360-degree sports camera that goes on to win awards and draw comparisons to GoPro Inc. Elsewhere in the Pearl River Delta, a niche design house is competing with the world’s best headphone makers. And in the capital Beijing, a little-known startup becomes one of the biggest purveyors of smartwatches on the planet.Insta360, SIVGA and Huami join drone maker DJI Technology Co. among a wave of startups that are dismantling the decades-old image of China as a clone factory — and adding to Washington’s concerns about its fast-ascending international rival. Within the world’s No. 2 economy, Trump’s campaign to contain China’s rise is in fact spurring its burgeoning tech sector to accelerate design and invention.The threat they pose is one of unmatchable geography: by bringing design expertise and innovation to the place where devices are manufactured, these companies are able to develop products faster and more cheaply.“Ninety percent of the world’s headphones are produced in China, 90% of China’s headphones are produced in Guangdong, and 90% of Guangdong’s headphones are made in Dongguan,” explains SIVGA co-founder and product chief Zhou Jian, an 18-year audio industry veteran who has done work for global brands like Sennheiser Electronic GmbH & Co., Sony and Bose. His company is based in Dongguan because, he says, “Dongguan’s industrial chain is near perfect.” Zhou estimates there are hundreds of specialist factories in the area focusing on a particular component, such as screws, and his network of contacts among those suppliers has been invaluable. It was “support from these good friends” that got SIVGA, short for Sound Impression Via Genuine Artwork, off the ground.Now employing more than 30 people and offering a premium brand called Sendy Audio, SIVGA sells a luxury pair of $599 headphones called Aiva. Featuring handcrafted wooden ear cups and intricately detailed metal grilles, the Aiva have shipped more than 2,000 units into a niche, high-margin market that’s usually reserved for U.S. boutique outfits like Audeze and Campfire Audio. “As far as we know, we are the only company in Dongguan with a woodworking department,” Zhou says, while also pointing out that at SIVGA “the development time is short and many decisions can be made on the spot.” This instant design responsiveness is a signature feature of China’s new tech upstarts, and Zhou sums it up with an old Chinese proverb: “small boats change course easier than big boats.”DJI is the pioneer that proved Chinese tech companies could aspire to be more than just manufacturing contractors or fast copiers. “DJI leads the industry with features like automatically avoiding obstacles in flight, which it implemented first,” notes Techsponential lead analyst Avi Greengart. “Rivals in the U.S., France and Taiwan have not been able to catch up.” DJI’s lead is based on the same geographic synergies as SIVGA’s. When a U.S. rival suffers a manufacturing hitch or defect, its ability to identify and react to the problem is hampered by the distance between its designers and manufacturers. DJI doesn’t have that problem, which has helped propel it to being the top drone maker in the world.“These are Chinese companies that want to be industry leaders and innovators. DJI and Insta360 are perfect examples of that movement,” says Anshel Sag, mobile industry analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy. “A big part of it comes from the entrepreneurial spirit of Shenzhen.”Like Dongguan, which this year saw a large new Huawei Technologies Co. campus open, Shenzhen is a nexus of component makers and suppliers eager to find new customers for their wares. The cacophonous Huaqiangbei bazaar in the city exhibits a wild array of gadgets from smartphone-electric shaver hybrids to neon-lit unicycles with Bluetooth speakers. That commoditized fray offers inspiration but also an impetus to rise above it with genuine innovation. The successful companies are the ones who make the most of the rabid production and iteration around them.“In Shenzhen, there’s a well-established supply chain system,” says Insta360 founder Liu Jingkang. “From a research perspective, in-house R&D may only contribute 60% of a product, the rest needs to be finished in factories.” The CEO of OnePlus, another company based in the city, has expressed pride in its ability to prototype new devices at great speed because he’s just a 45-minute drive away from its assembly lines.Even without being Apple Inc., Chinese companies are now building world-class, premium products, though China’s signature feature of undercutting the established market remains. Whether or not a Chinese company is first to a technology, it makes sure to be first to a breakthrough price.Backed by Xiaomi Corp. in 2014, Huami is responsible for creating the massively popular Xiaomi Mi Band, which has flooded the China market at a $20 price. The Mi Band offers most of the features of a Fitbit fitness tracker — including step counting and heart-rate monitoring — at a fraction of the cost. After expanding to sales in the U.S. and launching its own Amazfit brand, Huami is now shipping in excess of 5 million devices per quarter, and its chief executive talks openly about “taking out” at least some of its larger rivals, including Apple and Samsung Electronics Co.“The operating models for Garmin and other European and U.S. smart device vendors are flawed. Their retail price is very high,” Huami CEO and founder Wang Huang says. “You will only be able to sell very expensive products to a very small group of customers because mainstream and lower-end markets will be eroded by companies like us.”Evidence for the Huami chief’s words abounds in the smartphone market, where the top group of manufacturers is increasingly dominated by Chinese names like Xiaomi, Oppo and Huawei. 2018 saw these brands make major inroads into the European market, relying on better pricing and faster feature introductions. Xiaomi “consistently produces budget flagship phones with first-to-market implementations,” says Techsponential’s Greengart. Along with SIVGA, Huami and Insta360, they’re following in the footsteps of companies like Lenovo Group Ltd., which was among China’s early breakout successes after buying IBM Corp.’s PC business in 2004. Their global ambitions and innovation pose a serious threat to the leadership of a plethora of U.S. tech products in areas from design to functionality, whether they be GoPro cameras, Apple iPhones or HP laptops.China’s rapidly rising tech creators are not without commercial savvy. Many of them are planning to seek capital on Shanghai’s new trading venue for startups, locally known as the Star board. Ninebot Inc., the Xiaomi-backed outfit that acquired Segway in 2015, aims to raise $300 million there. In unicorn territory, the Google-backed Mobvoi, which creates natural language translation algorithms for its Wear OS smartwatches, is also said to be seeking a high-value listing on the Star market.Royole, the startup that earned a measure of notoriety by beating Samsung to selling the world’s first foldable device in 2019, has managed to secure a deal with Louis Vuitton that will see the two companies putting flexible screens on handbags of the future. Like Huami initially leaning on the Xiaomi brand to build itself up, Royole stands a chance to be a luxury goods player with the help of a bigger company. The differences between California’s Silicon Valley startups, which have tended to do a better job of marketing and deal-making, and China’s new generation of homegrown businesses are gradually disappearing.How and Why the U.S. Says China Steals Technology: QuickTakeAmerican critics, such as President Donald Trump, commonly point to a track record of Chinese companies copying features from abroad, and one of their bits of evidence is the way Apple’s iPhone software and design seem to be habitually recreated by Huawei, Xiaomi and others. There’s not much that a Western company can do in such situations. When Segway filed a complaint against a number of Chinese brands for IP violations, it ended up conceding the fight and getting acquired by one of its defendants.The observable change now is that a new generation of innovative companies aren’t waiting for someone else to show them the blueprint. China’s rapid ascent in innovation goes beyond anecdotal evidence from startups like DJI and Huami, and the country’s corporations now rank among the world’s most prolific patent applicants.“The trend of China moving to high-end manufacturing, research and design is unstoppable,” said Jia Mo, a Shanghai-based analyst with consultancy Canalys.To contact the reporters on this story: Vlad Savov in Tokyo at vsavov5@bloomberg.net;Gao Yuan in Beijing at ygao199@bloomberg.net;Lulu Yilun Chen in Hong Kong at ychen447@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net, Vlad Savov, Edwin ChanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
IBM Launches New Mainframe Generation to Combat Cybercrime
(Bloomberg) -- International Business Machines Corp. is introducing a revamped mainframe server geared to combating cybercrime across public and private cloud services.Mainframes are the world’s most powerful computers and one of IBM’s signature hardware products. The latest model, called z15, launched Thursday and was designed with extra-secure privacy capabilities to help businesses shift critical data on to multiple cloud networks, known as hybrid cloud.“We read in the press every day about data breaches that happen because of cybercrime and the fact that our personal information and business information is being stolen and used against us,” said Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM Z, the company’s mainframe program. “This mainframe is specifically designed to completely thwart that.”Moving data between third parties is often the root cause of privacy breaches, Mauri said. Last year, about 60% of businesses reported they suffered a data breach caused by a vendor or third party, according to research by risk management company Opus and Ponemon Institute.Through z15, businesses are able to control who can access their data -- and revoke that access at any time. They will also be able to enforce their own internal privacy policies, creating different views of their data for different employees and teams, even if they are using multiple private and public cloud providers, the company said in a statement.“This has never been done before,” Mauri said. “From the privacy point of view, this is a game changer.”IBM created the first mainframe computer about 55 years ago. Today they run everything from credit card transactions to airline reservation systems for two thirds of Fortune 100 companies. Each mainframe is custom-built and can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $3 million, depending on a client’s business requirements. On average, IBM upgrades its mainframe Z system every 2 1/2 years.Mike Chuba, an analyst at Gartner, said IBM was moving beyond introducing its new mainframes as just faster and more efficient computers. Instead, it’s connecting the upgrade to the company’s overall business strategy, he said. “This is a big shift away from the traditional speeds and feeds focus of these announcements,” Chuba said.IBM is interlocking the z15 to the hybrid cloud, in a bid to boost its $34 billion acquisition of open source software maker Red Hat. After lagging in the cloud market for more than a decade, IBM is pegging its future to a hybrid cloud strategy that will allow it to offer services on companies’ private clouds and also third-party public clouds.The 108-year-old tech giant has been struggling to adopt cloud-related technologies and has weathered almost seven straight years of shrinking revenue. Mainframe sales make up about 10 percent of IBM’s overall sales, according to a 2018 annual report.To contact the reporter on this story: Olivia Carville in New York at ocarville1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Andrew MartinFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
IBM (IBM) Outpaces Stock Market Gains: What You Should Know
IBM (IBM) closed at $145.02 in the latest trading session, marking a +1.7% move from the prior day.
- Reuters
IBM, Fraunhofer partner on German-backed quantum computing research push
IBM is joining forces with a German research institute to explore the potential of quantum computing, backed by a government plan to invest 650 million euros ($717 million) over two years in wider research in the field. Berlin's support, sealed at a meeting on Tuesday between Chancellor Angela Merkel and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, comes as Europe's biggest economy seeks to catch up to the United States and China in a global technology race. IBM will install a Q System One quantum computer at one of its facilities in Germany, partnering with the Fraunhofer Society - an applied research institute - to build a research unit and community around it.
- Reuters - UK Focus
Oil and gas majors sign deal to implement blockchain in Bakken oilfield
A group of oil and gas companies has agreed to begin testing blockchain, a technology at the heart of digital currencies, in a bid to lower administrative costs in their field operations while also reducing payment disputes and chances for fraud. The OOC Oil & Gas Blockchain Consortium, whose members include Chevron Corp, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp, Equinor and Royal Dutch Shell , among others, has awarded a contract to Data Gumbo to pilot the technology for water handling services in the Bakken shale field in North Dakota.
- Motley Fool
3 Cloud Computing Stocks for Every Equity Investor
Healthy gross margins, big growth opportunities, solid balance sheets, and attractive dividends.
- Zacks
Buy Oracle (ORCL) Stock Ahead of Q1 2020 Earnings?
Oracle (ORCL) beat both top and bottom-line estimates last quarter and its shares have outpaced the broader technology market over the last 12 months, up 12% against its industry's 1% decline. So is now the time to buy ORCL stock heading into Q1 2020 earnings?
- Zacks
The 4th Industrial Revolution Portfolio: Big Data Plays
Big data is changing the business landscape in which firms are competing, making it a necessity to not only have real-time data transparency but be able to analyze massive data sets to understand your business and your customers.
- Zacks
Server Market's Q2 in the Doldrums: Dell, HPE & More in View
Here's a look at the performance of the leading server vendors in second-quarter 2019 per IDC report.
- Motley Fool
Better Buy: Cisco Systems vs. IBM
Which tech stalwart is a more stable investment for a volatile market?
- Zacks
Cloudera's (CLDR) Q2 Loss Narrows, Revenues Increase Y/Y
Cloudera's (CLDR) second-quarter fiscal 2020 results hurt by higher operating expenses. However, strategic alliances and product development aid top-line growth.
- Investing.com
Stocks - Lyft, GM Rise Premarket; Slack, Mallinckrodt Tumbles
Investing.com - Stocks in focus in premarket trading on Thursday:
- Investing.com
Stocks - U.S. Futures Surge as U.S.-China Agree to Trade Talks in October
Investing.com - U.S. futures jumped on Thursday after China confirmed high-level trade talks with Washington would be held in October, prompting hopes that the trade war can be de-escalated.
- Bloomberg
Tech Leaders in Asia Warn of Supply Chain Split
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. Tech leaders in Asia are warning that risks from ongoing trade tensions are broadening, accelerating the fragmentation of the global industry and threatening collaboration in key research areas.China and the U.S. announced face-to-face negotiations will be held in the coming weeks, but the prospects for a quick resolution to the trade conflict look slim. Some tech companies are seeing weakening sales and their competitive edge erode, pushing players to radically overhaul supply chains. Such splintering may now extend to other areas, including critical fields like artificial intelligence, in which the pair of global superpowers lead.“The risk of the tension of the nature we see between the U.S. and China -- the two largest economies -- is that we may end up with a global economy that’s fragmented and supply chains that are fractured,” said Singapore’s Communications and Information Minister S. Iswaran. “That supply chain and fragmentation pertains to markets, investment flows and cooperation in terms of technology as well.”Read more: Trump Tumult Has Gadget Giants Splitting Along U.S.-China LinesThe minister was speaking at Bloomberg’s Sooner Than You Think technology conference in Singapore on Thursday, an event that featured representatives from U.S. tech giants including Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp. as well as Chinese artificial intelligence pioneer SenseTime Group Ltd.Ongoing trade tensions have been particularly hard on the tech players in both the U.S. and China. Tariffs have made it more difficult to win business, eroding the competitiveness of American companies in China. U.S. tariffs on roughly $110 billion worth of consumer imports from China went into effect at the beginning of this month, drawing retaliation from Beijing.In May, Washington added Huawei Technologies Co. to an entity list that curbed the Chinese tech giant’s ability to sell equipment in the U.S. and prohibited it from purchasing components from American suppliers. This move is also a blow to American suppliers, who are seeing their market share dip as they miss out on sales opportunities in China.“I think the U.S.-China issues are more than the trade war issues. Fundamentally they are issues of technology. I think 5G and IOT (internet of things) is important because, not just from an economic standpoint but from the military complex, dominance in those technologies is a game changer, so I think that’s a source of tension,” Piyush Gupta, chief executive officer of DBS Group Holdings Ltd., told Bloomberg TV.The harsher business environment is also pushing tech companies on both sides to re-evaluate their operations, giving rise to a splintering of supply chains -- into one that serves customers inside China, and another one outside of China that’s serves American customers. President Trump has even taken to Twitter to order multinational companies out of China.Many American companies that have spent decades wading deeper into the world’s most populous country in search of new markets, now face the prospect of losing hard-won market share in China to rivals from Europe, Asia -- as well as from Chinese companies whose increasing sophistication means that in some cases they now offer viable alternatives to foreign tech products.As a result of the trade war, many Chinese tech firms are developing their own alternatives to certain American technologies like semiconductors, said Xu Li, CEO of Chinese AI leader Sensetime. For the past two years, his company has been developing its own tailored chips for applications like health care and autonomous driving to rival more general-purpose chips from American companies like Nvidia Corp.Still, Sensetime aims to create a platform for idea exchange and collaboration internationally because that’s where “technology breakthroughs” come from. The company is focusing on partnerships with academic institutions that bridge “East and West,” he said.The disconnect is particularly acute in emerging technologies, where a tussle for leadership in areas like artificial intelligence and advanced computing underpins U.S.-China trade tensions. The backlash has prompted concerns over the technological setbacks that could result from a pullback in global collaboration, and has led to calls for more cooperation, not less. “No country has the resources and technologies it needs” to tackle the coming technology wave, said Tom Mitchell of the school of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, at the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week. “We must have global cooperation in AI.”“I don’t think anyone wins a trade war in the end,” said David Kenny, CEO of ratings and consumer tracking company Nielsen Holdings Plc, which operates in more than a hundred countries. “The uncertainty does cause investment levels to come down.”He said AI models improve with more global data and without the ability to share data across borders makes all the algorithms less effective. “Those who share globally are going to beat any individual countries’ initiatives,” he said.\--With assistance from Lulu Yilun Chen, Enda Curran, Stephanie Phang, Chanyaporn Chanjaroen, Yongchang Chin, Edwin Chan and Joyce Koh.To contact the reporter on this story: Shelly Banjo in Hong Kong at sbanjo@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net, Colum MurphyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Hurricane Dorian Lashes Florida After Wreaking Havoc on Bahamas
(Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Dorian menaced the U.S. East Coast with devastating flooding and winds, lashing Florida after laying waste to the Bahamas in a brutal two-day battering that caused damage that may cost the islands billions of dollars.The center of the Category 2 hurricane was located about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Daytona Beach, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of about 105 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said in public advisory at 5 a.m. local time. Earlier, it reported bands of rain moving into northeast Florida and squalls in the region.The storm is moving north-northwest at about 8 miles per hour and should move “dangerously close” to the Florida and Georgia coasts through this evening, with its center approaching the Carolinas by Thursday, according to the NHC. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in North Carolina, clearing the way for his administration to coordinate disaster relief efforts as needed.“Florida will likely dodge the worst impacts, although coastal areas will have long stretches of tropical-storm force winds later today and tomorrow,” said Todd Crawford, lead meteorologist at The Weather Co., an IBM business. The storm, though, could still make landfall north of Florida, he said.In the Bahamas, the government discontinued all tropical storm warnings, according to the NHC. Still, Dorian has left many of the nation’s islands devastated and killed at least seven people, a death toll Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said he expects to rise. Parts of Abaco islands “are decimated” and there is “severe flooding, there is severe damage to homes, businesses and other buildings and infrastructure,” he said at a press conference.The damage wrought upon Grand Bahama and neighboring Abaco by the “monster storm” is likely to run into “hundreds of millions if not billions,” the Nassau Guardian newspaper cited Deputy Prime Minister Peter Turnquest as saying. Large tracts of homes are under water, and the government intends to make formal appeals for assistance, he said.On Tuesday, the Bahamas government delivered an “urgent plea” for owners of boats and jet skis to help out with post-hurricane rescue operations for residents stranded by flood waters.“I don’t think there has been a populated area in the entire Atlantic basin in the climatological record that has experienced the severity and the intensity of impacts that Grand Bahama Island and Abaco have experienced in the past two days,” said Ryan Truchelut, president of Weather Tiger in Tallahassee, Florida.Coastal regions as far as North Carolina are in danger of life-threatening inundation over the next 36 hours and up to southeast Virginia, over the next 48 hours, according to the NHC. The center in its latest advisory discontinued a tropical storm warning for Sebastian Inlet, south of Cape Canaveral, Florida.Still, tropical-storm-force winds were lashing parts of northeastern Florida as bands of rain moved in Tuesday morning, Jacksonville’s Action News Jax reported on Twitter. All bridges in the city remained open in the early hours of the morning, the sheriff’s office said in a tweet.Cities further up the coast were also bracing for the coming storm. Sandbags have been distributed in Charleston, South Carolina, and the city encouraged some residents to park their vehicles on higher ground. Local and state governments in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas have ordered coastline residents and businesses to begin evacuations.“Please listen to and follow all evacuation orders,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said in a statement announcing a mandatory evacuation order for the state’s tourist-friendly coast. “We have seen the life and death effects of this storm in the Bahamas, and we urge everyone on the islands at the coast to leave.”Florida Power & Light Co. had restored almost 70,000 outages by 4 p.m. local time on Tuesday as the storm moved in, according to a statement. Many of the power cuts had been due to trees and vegetation falling on equipment and power lines. The company said customers should prepare for increased outages through Wednesday.Dorian is weakening in part because it has exhausted its supply of warm ocean water by sitting over the same spot for days, Truchelut said. He doesn’t see the storm -- pulled along by a low pressure system -- moving much farther west, but he said the eastern North and South Carolina are still very much at risk.“The story of Dorian will be written in two parts,” The Weather Co.’s Crawford said. “First, the utter devastation and humanitarian crisis in parts of the Bahamas and, second, the surprise major impacts in the Southeast and Northeast U.S.” Winds that occur in the coastal areas of the Carolinas, mid-Atlantic, and even Cape Cod, may end up being stronger than what Florida will get, he said.To map assets in Hurricane Dorian’s path, click here.(Updates with latest weather forecast data, Bahamas deputy prime minister comments.)\--With assistance from Sharon Cho, David R. Baker, Will Wade, Todd Shields, Josh Wingrove, Alyza Sebenius, Michael Riley, Bill Lehane, Sheela Tobben, Jonathan Levin, Andrew Janes and Kim Chipman.To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net;Matthew Bristow in Bogota at mbristow5@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tina Davis at tinadavis@bloomberg.net, Brian Wingfield, John DeaneFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Singapore Tries to Find Its Own Path in Clash of AI Superpowers
(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. The escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is chilling global collaboration that has long driven breakthroughs in technology and science. The tiny island nation of Singapore is trying to carve out an independent role in the clash and demonstrate the advantages of cooperation in fields like artificial intelligence.It’s a difficult balancing act. The country, with cordial ties to the two superpowers, is fighting against nationalistic forces on both sides. Artificial intelligence is becoming something of a test case for how independent countries will participate in emerging technologies.China and the U.S. have dominated AI development, raising concerns that other countries will lose out on its benefits and have no voice in devising regulations. Yet Singapore’s government is investing S$500 million ($360 million) on AI and other digital technologies through 2020 and has attracted Chinese and American companies to the country with policies that support AI research. Singapore’s Communications and Information Minister S. Iswaran jumped into the debate this year, proposing a framework for the ethical use of AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos.“Singapore has an important role to play,” said Lawrence Loh, an associate professor at NUS Business School. “We will never be able to match the technological prowess of the U.S. and China, but there are certain areas where Singapore can take leadership like using its position to get people to work together.”Iswaran will elaborate on Singapore’s vision at Bloomberg’s Sooner Than You Think technology conference on Thursday. He will kick off an event that will feature speakers from Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Temasek Holdings Pte, China AI pioneer SenseTime Group Ltd., as well as Southeast Asia’s leading tech startups Grab Holdings Inc. and Gojek.Singapore has long positioned itself as neutral ground. It’s already home to the Singapore International Arbitration Centre and the Singapore International Commercial Court, forums for international dispute resolution. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his annual policy speech last month that Singapore will maintain its neutral position and not take sides between the U.S. and China.Singapore Must Stay Independent in U.S.-China Conflict: PM Lee (Video)The affluent city-state of 5.6 million is not leaving anything to chance when it comes to future-proofing its economy.It has set up a dedicated inter-agency task force to study all aspects of AI. And in recent weeks, it granted an AI patent to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. within just three months -- a record pace that underlines the country’s determination to move full speed ahead.“Singapore plays a pivotal role as it facilitates our entry into markets of our interest rapidly,” Benjamin Bai, vice president and chief IP counsel of Alibaba-affiliate Ant Financial, said in a statement released by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.Still, there is skepticism about the country’s prospects. Singapore, like several other countries, is making a genuine push to develop its AI ecosystem, but its effort is tiny compared with the giants, said Kai-Fu Lee, founder of the venture firm Sinovation Ventures.“Unless Singapore can unify ASEAN and become the undisputed AI leader and supplier in ASEAN countries, its efforts will not lead to a fraction of the U.S. or China,” Lee said in an email.The government has been stepping up efforts to lure companies working in AI.Alibaba has opened its first joint research institute outside China in Singapore in collaboration with Nanyang Technological University, while Salesforce.com Inc. opened its first AI research center outside of its research and development hub of Palo Alto, California -- adding to a growing list of new research centers including the Singapore Management University’s Centre for AI and Data Governance.Singapore Pushes for Mediation Role as Trade War Breeds DisputesGIC Pte, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, has invested in Canadian AI companies, including Montreal-based Element AI Inc., which has set up an office in the city-state after raising $102 million in new funding in 2017.“It’s very hard to see how things will pan out with the trade war,” NUS Business School’s Loh said. “Singapore’s focus should be technology, not geopolitics.”\--With assistance from Edwin Chan.To contact the reporter on this story: Yoolim Lee in Singapore at yoolim@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net, Colum MurphyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
The New Tech Paradigm Won't Save You
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Back in the day, PCs were hip and investors chased computer stocks to sky-high valuations. Everyone was buying a desktop, and then a laptop, and the companies that supplied them could do no wrong.Then came the smartphone. We all know to blame Apple Inc. for the end of the PC era. Though Steve Jobs didn’t invent the “phone + internet” mash-up, the iPhone spurred competitors to make such devices useful and customers took to them with glee. A decade-long smartphone boom followed.Take a look at the recent share price performance of handset makers and there’s not much left to be gleeful about. As handsets got boring, so too did the shares of the companies that relied on them for revenue. HTC Corp. and Xiaomi Corp., two of the few firms left that focus on handsets, have seen their shares plummet in the past year. PC makers, on the other hand, have been a little more exciting.Yet if you divide the universe of smartphone and PC makers in two, you’ll discover something interesting: Those that primarily focus on corporate customers or lead the market in a key non-consumer business are outperforming those that get a larger slice of revenue from smartphones and consumer PCs. Since Dec. 21, when Dell Technologies Inc. started trading again after a take-private deal in 2013, its shares jumped 21%. International Business Machines Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. have all climbed since that date. (2) By contrast, LG Electronics Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd., HTC, HP Inc., Acer Inc. and Xiaomi all dropped. The first major outlier is Apple. I suspect that’s because fund managers sitting on piles of cash realized that it probably makes sense to put money into companies with fat margins and a cult following, even if it’s lost a little luster. ZTE Corp. also did well, but that’s mostly because it’s recovering from being at the wrong end of U.S. national-security policy.Instead of looking at PCs versus smartphones, a paradigm that worked well for around a decade, the better way for investors to divide the technology-hardware sector is consumer and enterprise. The two HPs – Enterprise and Inc. – serve as the perfect example. HP Inc. gets 60% of its revenue from desktop and notebook PCs, while HP Enterprise sells servers, storage and networking services. HP Enterprise is up 10% while HP Inc. fell 7% over the period. IBM is up 22%, Acer is down 13% and Xiaomi has fallen 36%. The lines do get a little blurred. Lenovo, for example, is also in the server and smartphone businesses, and Dell gets around 11% of its revenue from consumer PCs. Having divided their investible universe along these new fault lines, however, punters would be foolish to believe that the bull-run in enterprise will continue unabated. Both HPE and Dell last week raised their full-year earnings forecast, spurring shares to rise. In reality, that bottom-line strength appears to come from better margins and cost control rather than a rosier outlook for revenue. “We’ve tried to position the company to be successful in any economic environment,” Dell CFO Tom Sweet told Bloomberg News. That kind of attitude deserves the 10% single-day spurt the stock received. But cost control can only go so far. If a global economic slowdown and the trade war don’t abate, then not even fiscal pragmatism can save earnings.Sell-side analysts are adjusting accordingly. They’ve trimmed most companies’ 2019 revenue forecasts over the past six months, as well as next year’s EPS estimates.By examining more closely the end-market and customer base for each company, investors will find it easier to sort likely winners from losers. In the face of even bigger problems for the economy, however, a new analytic framework won’t change the fact that tough times are still ahead.(1) That's when Dell shares started trading. The rise/fall divide since that date is somewhat coincidental, but the wider point still stands: Enterprise has largely outperformed consumer.To contact the author of this story: Tim Culpan at tculpan1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Rachel Rosenthal at rrosenthal21@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tim Culpan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. He previously covered technology for Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Motley Fool
The 10 Biggest IoT Stocks
If you're looking for a list of Internet of Things stocks to buy, these 10 companies are a good place to start.
- Simply Wall St.
Can International Business Machines Corporation's (NYSE:IBM) ROE Continue To Surpass The Industry Average?
While some investors are already well versed in financial metrics (hat tip), this article is for those who would like...
- Bloomberg
IBM Asia Pacific CEO Green on Artificial Intelligence
Sep.04 -- Harriet Green, chief executive officer for Asia Pacific at International Business Machines Corp., talks about the prospects for artificial intelligence. She speaks on the sidelines of the "Sooner Than You Think" technology conference in Singapore with Haslinda Amin on "Bloomberg Markets: Asia."
