Ant Group’s nightmare is finally over. Ant Group is buying back some of its shares in a move that indicates that the evisceration inflicted upon it as a result of Jack Ma’s transgressions is over and the company can get back to business. Ant Group is proposing to buy back 7.8% of every shareholder’s position at a valuation of $78.5bn...
Samsung echoes Micron. Samsung reported the worst set of preliminary results for many years but critically, they were slightly better than expectations and show a similar pattern to Micron where the decline in demand appears to be stabilising. Q2 2023 revenues / operating profit is expected to be around KRW60tn (down 22% YoY) / KRW600bn down from KRW14.1tn in Q2...
I think Musk wins this cage fight. Meta Platforms is releasing an alternative to Twitter which will give all those who say they want to leave an opportunity to do so and will be a real-world test of the power of the network. Meta’s new app will be called Threads which will be a text-based platform where users can post...
History looks set to repeat itself. China’s limitations on Gallium and Germanium will cause some short-term disruption but it will not deliver negotiating leverage and will only accelerate the decoupling and increase China’s isolation in the long term. China has announced that it will impose limitations on the export of Gallium and Germanium in order to “safeguard the national security...
Apple makes lemons from lemonade. The master of marketing will be at work drumming up excitement via increased scarcity for a product that has no long-term future in this iteration even if the Metaverse does take over and replaces the smartphone. The FT is reporting (see here) that Apple has been forced to make substantial cuts to its production numbers...
Irrational exuberance is in full swing. As surely as autumn and winter follow summer, the current exuberance around AI is not going to last simply because the machines remain incapable of living up to the expectations that have been set for them. These cycles typically take the form of a discovery of some description followed by a ramping of expectations...
Bottoming out? Micron reported lower-than-expected losses and guided better for the coming quarter as the company thinks that the worst is over in terms of weak demand and inventory correction giving a much-needed positive signal for the rest of the industry. FQ3 2023 revenues / Adj-EPS were $3.75bn / LOSS$1.43 compared to forecasts of $3.68bn / LOSS$1.57 but it was...
USA looks to tighten further. The US Department of Commerce is looking to tighten restrictions on China still further by again lowering the performance bar above which exports to China of AI training chips will be restricted, but I am far from convinced that this will set China back that much. In October 2022, the USA set a limit of...
Baidu highlights the CCP’s conundrum. Baidu’s latest model release claims to be better than ChatGPT but raises more questions than answers with opaque testing and an uncertain regulatory environment which may prevent this innovation from seeing the light of day. Internal testing by the state-owned China Journal of Science (see here) claims that Wenxin 3.5 (aka ERNIE) had surpassed ChatGPT...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
Artificial Intelligence – Regulatory debate pt. II.
An impossible problem. China is pressing ahead with AI regulation which is going to be so problematic that it could end up destroying development in this key technology highlighting the conflict between the CCP’s need to control public discourse and its desire to excel at AI. The proposed European regulation has exactly the same problems but the greater freedom that...