from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2Xfz4AX

The Euro shot through several barriers during the week, as we even managed to threaten 1.19 on Friday. But then it looks like gravity may be returning.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2XdJssD

Li Auto, a Chinese electric vehicle maker backed by mainland online services delivery giant Meituan Dianping, has priced its American depositary receipts at US$11.5 each in an initial public offering on Nasdaq that will raise about U$1.1 billion for the firm to expand in the world's biggest car market, according to a person familiar with the matter.The IPO by the Beijing-based start-up, which designs and makes electric SUVs, looks set to be the largest fundraising by a Chinese company on US exchanges since December 2018 when Tencent Music Entertainment Group raised US$1.07 billion or NIO's US$1.15 billion offer in September 2018, depending on how much of its overallotment option Li Auto exercises, according to data provided by Refinitiv."Electric vehicles will be the largest opportunity for technology start-ups worldwide after smartphones and mobile internet," said Mingming Huang, founding partner at early-stage venture capital firm Future Capital, who was an angel investor in Li Auto and topped up in multiple funding rounds. "EV plus autonomous driving will change the way people travel … the trillion-dollar companies will come from this sector."Li Auto's SUV. Photo: Handout alt=Li Auto's SUV. Photo: HandoutChina's electric car start-ups are tanking up on capital to fuel an intense fight for market share.Xpeng Motors has made a confidential filing for a listing in the US, while New York-listed NIO shares have tripled so far this year. Elsewhere, Zhejiang-based carmaker Geely Automobile Holdings, which makes the Geometry A electric car, said it plans to list on Shanghai's Nasdaq-style Star Market later this year.Investors are keen to jump on the electric-vehicle bandwagon after watching 17-year-old, California-based Tesla overtake Toyota Motor, Volkswagen and Hyundai Motor this year in terms of combined market value to become the world's most valuable carmaker. Tesla sells its Model 3, Model S and Model X in China.Li Auto, founded by serial entrepreneur Xiang Li, is the first company in China to commercialise what is known as extended-range technology for electric vehicles, which helps solve the problem of a lack of charging infrastructure across China and still developing battery technology. If the car's battery runs down then a combustion engine provides electrical power.More than 80 per cent of Chinese car owners do not have their own car parking space which means they cannot install their own charging point, said Future Capital's Huang. Many consumers are still anxious about their car's charge running low with nowhere to top up."Xiang Li has a deep understanding of the preferences and the pain points of car owners in China," said Huang, who has known Li for more than 15 years.While Li Auto still has negative cash flow, the capital-intensive electric vehicle market is at a very early growth stage, still only around 5 per cent of car sales in China. "Its still at a very fast growing and everybody is trying to grab market share," said Huang.Li also founded car internet platform Autohome, which now has a market capitalisation of over US$10 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, which gave many investors the confidence to back his new venture despite fierce competition in the sector.Li Auto and Xpeng have chosen to list in the US despite rising US-China tensions.Legislation passed by the Senate would kick Chinese companies off US stock exchanges unless their audits are open to inspection by US regulators.However, New York still has a far deeper pool of liquidity for start-ups to tap than Greater China, meaning Xpeng and Li Auto could potentially achieve a higher valuation in the US than they would have done closer to home.The company's offer of 95 million ADRs are priced above the marketed range of US$8 to US$10 each due to strong demand among investors. Bookrunners for the deal included investment bankers at CICC, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS.Li Auto's ADR is expected to begin trading on Nasdaq on July 30. One ADR represents two ordinary shares in the company.Asia-focused private equity firm Hillhouse Capital will buy up to US$300 million of the stock at the offer price, according to its prospectus.With the successful completion of the IPO, Li Auto will also privately place new ordinary shares to existing shareholders totalling US$380 million. These shareholders include Meituan Dianping, which through an affiliate owns about 14.5 per cent in the company before the IPO, and ByteDance, the owner of video-sharing social network operator TikTok.Li Auto plans to use proceeds from the share sale to develop manufacturing facilities, research and development of new products, and as working capital.For the three months ended June this year, Li Auto recorded a net loss of 75.2 million yuan (HK$83 million), narrowing it by 2.5 per cent from a net loss of 77.1 million yuan in the first quarter this year.This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/30jBP65

If a top is forming then the market should stair-step down, first taking out $1966.50 then $1952.30.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/30gEmhd

Bitcoin closed July at $11,351, according to Messari.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2XfSOUZ

(Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp. isn’t the only company interested in buying TikTok’s U.S. operations, according to people familiar with the matter.U.S. government officials probing national-security concerns around the Chinese-owned video-sharing app have had talks with at least one other large company as well as investors in TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. who are interested in taking a stake in TikTok, according to one of the people, who requested anonymity because the discussions are private. This person declined to identify these companies.ByteDance is considering changes to the structure of TikTok because President Donald Trump is weighing ordering a divestiture of TikTok’s U.S. business, a decision that could come at any time.Venture investors in ByteDance have approached Chief Executive Officer Zhang Yiming with a range of proposals to address U.S. concerns that the app, especially popular with teens, is a security threat, people familiar with the matter have said. Any solution would likely have to pass scrutiny from U.S. regulators in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, as well as U.S. antitrust regulators.The deal provides a rare opportunity to profit off the momentum of the fastest-growing social media app in the U.S. Still, not all companies likely to be attracted to such a deal will even be in the running. TikTok’s valuation is estimated at $20 billion to $40 billion, so few companies would be able to afford it. Most of those that would are likely to find it politically difficult to make the move.The CEOs of Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. testified this week in the U.S. House of Representatives to answer lawmakers’ questions about their enormous market power. While any one of the four companies could fit TikTok into their product offerings, deals by these giants are already under a microscope.Google, whose YouTube is a competing video offering, is already facing a European Union probe for its much smaller acquisition of Fitbit Inc. Apple doesn’t tend to make acquisitions anywhere near large as TikTok. And Facebook’s years-ago purchases of smaller rivals Instagram and WhatsApp have been brought up anew amid the antitrust scrutiny. The world’s largest social network has already worked to turn lawmakers against TikTok, and is unlikely to court further risk to its already tenuous position on data security. Facebook also looked at purchasing Musical.ly, the predecessor to TikTok, in 2016, and passed.Microsoft, with a market value of $1.55 trillion, is bigger than Google or Facebook, but currently has a better reputation in Washington. The company wasn’t invited to the antitrust hearing on July 29, and has largely escaped recent criticism of Big Tech’s outsize influence. It’s unclear whether Microsoft would seek to integrate TikTok into its own operations, or join with other investors from private equity or venture capital to finance spinning out TikTok as a separate entity based in the U.S. With the second option, investors could seek to gain even more from a TikTok stock listing in the future.Media companies, such as Walt Disney Co. and Verizon Communications Inc., have been interested in purchasing social-media assets in the past. Disney in 2016 considered but ultimately decided against purchasing Twitter Inc., for instance. TikTok’s U.S.-based CEO, Kevin Mayer, was formerly the head of streaming for Disney, and may be better positioned to help broker a deal in the media world.Other social-media companies, such as Twitter and Snapchat parent Snap Inc., have smaller valuations than TikTok and therefore are unlikely bidders. They would need to use stock or outside financial help to complete such a transaction.It’s still not clear how a U.S. divestiture of TikTok would work, and how completely the app would have to separate from its current Chinese ownership. The company hasn’t said how such a move would affect employees, the technology or its product. However the ownership shakes out, there is one group that no potential buyer or investor wants to alienate: TikTok’s 165 million American users.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2Pe6ueK

(Bloomberg) — Nvidia Corp. is in advanced talks to acquire Arm Ltd., the chip designer that SoftBank Group Corp. bought for $32 billion four years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.The two parties aim to reach a deal in the next few weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Nvidia is the only suitor in concrete discussions with SoftBank, according to the people.A deal for Arm could be the largest ever in the semiconductor industry, which has been consolidating in recent years as companies seek to diversify and add scale. But any deal with Nvidia, which is a customer of Arm, would likely trigger regulatory scrutiny as well as a wave of opposition from other users.Cambridge, England-based Arm’s technology underpins chips that are crucial to most modern electronics, including those that dominate the smartphone market, an area in which Nvidia has failed to gain a foothold. Customers including Apple Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Intel Corp., could demand assurances that a new owner would continue providing equal access to Arm’s instruction set. Such concerns resulted in SoftBank, a neutral company, buying Arm the last time it was for sale.No final decisions have been made, and the negotiations could drag on longer or fall apart, the people said. SoftBank may gauge interest from other suitors if it can’t reach an agreement with Nvidia, the people said. Representatives for Nvidia, SoftBank and Arm declined to comment.Divestment Drive“With Nvidia’s low-cost fabless model enabling it to focus on R&D, engineering and programming, the fit with Arm would be perfect,” said Neil Campling, an analyst at Mirabaud Securities.Nvidia is the largest maker of graphics processors and it’s spreading the use of the gaming component into new areas such as artificial intelligence processing in data centers and self-driving cars. Marrying its own capabilities with central processor units designed by Arm may enable it to take on Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in a more comprehensive way, according to Rosenblatt Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann. He estimates Nvidia would have to pay about $55 billion for Arm.“You need control of BOTH CPU and GPU roadmaps and this, of course, includes data centers,” he wrote in a note Friday, referring to central processing units and graphic processing units. “Strategically, Nvidia needs a scalable CPU that can be integrated into its GPU roadmap, as is the case with AMD and Intel.”Billionaire Masayoshi Son has been selling some of SoftBank’s trophy assets as the company seeks to pay down debt at the Japanese conglomerate. SoftBank has offloaded part of its stake in Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and a chunk of its holdings in wireless carrier T-Mobile US Inc.SoftBank has been exploring options to exit part or all of its stake in Arm through a sale or public stock listing, Bloomberg News has reported. The chip-design company could go public as soon as next year if SoftBank decides to proceed with that option, people with knowledge of the matter have said.Arm has become more valuable as it pushes its architecture into smart cars, data centers and networking gear. The company could be worth $44 billion if it pursues an initial public offering next year, a valuation that may rise to $68 billion by 2025, according to New Street Research LLP.Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, is the world’s largest graphics chipmaker. The stock has surged more than twenty-fold in the past five years, giving the company more firepower to do large deals. Nvidia’s market value has increased to more than $260 billion in that time, surpassing Intel. The stock was little changed Friday in New York.(Updates with analyst comment in eighth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/3hUjTos