TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-
1.#BYTE DANCE - ByteDance is not in preliminary discussions about listing video app TikTok on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a person familiar with the matter said, following a Chinese media report that talks were underway.
The Global Times, published by China's ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper, said earlier on its Twitter account that ByteDance was in preliminary talks about a NYSE listing. Shortly after, it tweeted that ByteDance had denied the report.
No such talks were being held, said the source, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak publicly on the matter.
ByteDance, which owns the video app, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the matter.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalize a deal to shift TikTok's American assets into a new entity to address U.S. security concerns. Those talks have continued since Biden took office in January, sources have said.
The White House has said it has an ongoing review of potential risks posed by TikTok on U.S. data. The U.S. Justice Department asked two federal appeals courts earlier this month to put on hold government appeals on lower courts' rulings blocking restrictions the Trump administration sought against the app.
2. #TWITTER :Japan's recently appointed vaccine tsar, Taro Kono, is having a breakout moment.
Twitter-savvy and educated at Georgetown University in Washington, Kono has seen his popularity surge even as the government of his boss, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, has been battered by criticism over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two recent opinion polls have favoured Kono, who is also the minister for administrative reform, to be the next prime minister. As Japan launches its much awaited COVID-19 vaccination campaign, his role as the logistics head of the programme has thrust him even more firmly into the spotlight.
Part of Kono's attraction, in a nation known for wooden, script-following leaders, is his ability to engage directly with voters through social media, a sharp contrast to Suga, who has been criticised for seeming stiff and aloof from voters.
In recent weeks, Kono, 58, has used Twitter to publish videos on vaccine safety, repost memes and address media reports. He frequently responds directly to followers - 2.2 million on his Japanese account and 50,000 for his English one.
Last week he posted about conferences with governors over the coronavirus, and a black mask embroidered with a dinosaur skull he had worn the previous day.
But for all his appeal to voters and a resume that includes foreign and defence minister, some in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which he would lead as premier, are wary.
Given the LDP's majority in parliament, its leader is virtually guaranteed the premiership. Only two LDP presidents have failed to be premier during brief spells when the party was out of power - including Kono's father, Yohei.
Some say his father's being denied the top job may have helped feed the son's ambition for the post.
1.#BYTE DANCE - ByteDance is not in preliminary discussions about listing video app TikTok on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), a person familiar with the matter said, following a Chinese media report that talks were underway.
The Global Times, published by China's ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper, said earlier on its Twitter account that ByteDance was in preliminary talks about a NYSE listing. Shortly after, it tweeted that ByteDance had denied the report.
No such talks were being held, said the source, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak publicly on the matter.
ByteDance, which owns the video app, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the matter.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalize a deal to shift TikTok's American assets into a new entity to address U.S. security concerns. Those talks have continued since Biden took office in January, sources have said.
The White House has said it has an ongoing review of potential risks posed by TikTok on U.S. data. The U.S. Justice Department asked two federal appeals courts earlier this month to put on hold government appeals on lower courts' rulings blocking restrictions the Trump administration sought against the app.
2. #TWITTER :Japan's recently appointed vaccine tsar, Taro Kono, is having a breakout moment.
Twitter-savvy and educated at Georgetown University in Washington, Kono has seen his popularity surge even as the government of his boss, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, has been battered by criticism over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two recent opinion polls have favoured Kono, who is also the minister for administrative reform, to be the next prime minister. As Japan launches its much awaited COVID-19 vaccination campaign, his role as the logistics head of the programme has thrust him even more firmly into the spotlight.
Part of Kono's attraction, in a nation known for wooden, script-following leaders, is his ability to engage directly with voters through social media, a sharp contrast to Suga, who has been criticised for seeming stiff and aloof from voters.
In recent weeks, Kono, 58, has used Twitter to publish videos on vaccine safety, repost memes and address media reports. He frequently responds directly to followers - 2.2 million on his Japanese account and 50,000 for his English one.
Last week he posted about conferences with governors over the coronavirus, and a black mask embroidered with a dinosaur skull he had worn the previous day.
But for all his appeal to voters and a resume that includes foreign and defence minister, some in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which he would lead as premier, are wary.
Given the LDP's majority in parliament, its leader is virtually guaranteed the premiership. Only two LDP presidents have failed to be premier during brief spells when the party was out of power - including Kono's father, Yohei.
Some say his father's being denied the top job may have helped feed the son's ambition for the post.
The retailer recently partnered with Ulta Beauty, and said the cosmetics store chain would open shops at over 100 Target locations, a move that will help bring new shoppers to its outlets.
Shares of Target, which also has deals with Levi Strauss and Walt Disney Co, were up about 1% in premarket trading
5.#BYTE DANCE:- ByteDance has agreed to a $92 million class-action settlement to settle data privacy claims from some U.S. TikTok users, according to documents filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Illinois.
ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the short video app TikTok that has more than 100 million U.S. users, agreed to the settlement after more than a year of litigation.
"While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we'd like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community," TikTok said Thursday. The settlement still requires court approval.
Shares of Target, which also has deals with Levi Strauss and Walt Disney Co, were up about 1% in premarket trading
5.#BYTE DANCE:- ByteDance has agreed to a $92 million class-action settlement to settle data privacy claims from some U.S. TikTok users, according to documents filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Illinois.
ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the short video app TikTok that has more than 100 million U.S. users, agreed to the settlement after more than a year of litigation.
"While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we'd like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community," TikTok said Thursday. The settlement still requires court approval.
TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-
1.#BYTE DANCE - TikTok owner ByteDance is working on a Clubhouse-like app for China, sources familiar with the matter said, as the global success of the U.S.-based audio chat service inspires a rush of copycats in the country.
At least a dozen similar apps have been launched in the past month, with momentum picking up after Clubhouse was blocked in China in early February. Clubhouse had seen a surge in users who participated in discussions on sensitive topics such as Xinjiang detention camps and Hong Kong independence.
New offerings include Xiaomi Corp's reworking of its Mi Talk app into an invitation-only audio service targeted at professionals last week. More are currently under development, industry executives say.
ByteDance's plans are still in the early stages, said two sources who were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified.
Discussions about TikTok and ByteDance on Clubhouse had prompted interest in the genre from ByteDance executives including CEO Zhang Yiming, said one of the sources.
ByteDance declined to comment.
The success of Clubhouse, which can host up to 8,000 people per chat room and has seen a discussion between Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev boost user numbers, has rammed home the potential of audio chat services.
But similar apps in China are expected to take on Chinese characteristics that will accommodate censorship and government oversight.
One such example is Nasdaq-listed Lizhi Inc's Zhiya app which was launched in 2013 and whose users usually talk about video games or sing songs.
The app requires real name registration, a trait Lizhi CEO Marco Lai says is key in China. The company also employs staff to listen to conversations in every room and deploys artificial intelligence tools to weed out "unwanted" content, such as pornography or politically sensitive issues.
The app was briefly taken down by Chinese regulators in 2019, but reinstated after Lizhi made rectifications.
2. #WALMART:-Walmart Inc-owned Indian e-commerce company Flipkart is looking at going public in the United States through a merger with a blank-check company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Flipkart has reached out to several special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) and could seek a valuation of at least $35 billion in a blank-check deal, the report Both Flipkart and Walmart did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Reuters reported in September that Bengaluru-based Flipkart, which vies with players such as Amazon.com's local unit and India's Reliance Industries, was preparing for an initial public offering overseas as early as 2021.
3. #ZOOM :--Zoom Video Communications Inc said it had recovered from an outage where some users were unable to join meetings on the video-conferencing platform on Wednesday.
The company's status page said all systems were operational.
Zoom said the glitch was likely due to a localized internet service issue.
The platform has seen a meteoric rise in users, thanks to remote work and online learning against the backdrop of stay-at-home orders.
Outage tracking website Downdetector.com showed nearly 2,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Zoom at its peak at 9 a.m. ET.
Separately, telecom operator Verizon Communication Inc S internet services were also affected earlier, with nearly 5,400 users registering complaints at 10 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector.
Verizon said it had since resolved the issue. "Earlier today there was an issue impacting internet routing for some of our customers. The issue has since been resolved," a spokesperson for the telecom operator said.
In January, thousands of users across the U.S. East Coast faced widespread internet outage from providers including Verizon, which disrupted services offered by Google, Amazon, Zoom, Slack and other technology firms.
1.#BYTE DANCE - TikTok owner ByteDance is working on a Clubhouse-like app for China, sources familiar with the matter said, as the global success of the U.S.-based audio chat service inspires a rush of copycats in the country.
At least a dozen similar apps have been launched in the past month, with momentum picking up after Clubhouse was blocked in China in early February. Clubhouse had seen a surge in users who participated in discussions on sensitive topics such as Xinjiang detention camps and Hong Kong independence.
New offerings include Xiaomi Corp's reworking of its Mi Talk app into an invitation-only audio service targeted at professionals last week. More are currently under development, industry executives say.
ByteDance's plans are still in the early stages, said two sources who were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified.
Discussions about TikTok and ByteDance on Clubhouse had prompted interest in the genre from ByteDance executives including CEO Zhang Yiming, said one of the sources.
ByteDance declined to comment.
The success of Clubhouse, which can host up to 8,000 people per chat room and has seen a discussion between Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev boost user numbers, has rammed home the potential of audio chat services.
But similar apps in China are expected to take on Chinese characteristics that will accommodate censorship and government oversight.
One such example is Nasdaq-listed Lizhi Inc's Zhiya app which was launched in 2013 and whose users usually talk about video games or sing songs.
The app requires real name registration, a trait Lizhi CEO Marco Lai says is key in China. The company also employs staff to listen to conversations in every room and deploys artificial intelligence tools to weed out "unwanted" content, such as pornography or politically sensitive issues.
The app was briefly taken down by Chinese regulators in 2019, but reinstated after Lizhi made rectifications.
2. #WALMART:-Walmart Inc-owned Indian e-commerce company Flipkart is looking at going public in the United States through a merger with a blank-check company, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Flipkart has reached out to several special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) and could seek a valuation of at least $35 billion in a blank-check deal, the report Both Flipkart and Walmart did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Reuters reported in September that Bengaluru-based Flipkart, which vies with players such as Amazon.com's local unit and India's Reliance Industries, was preparing for an initial public offering overseas as early as 2021.
3. #ZOOM :--Zoom Video Communications Inc said it had recovered from an outage where some users were unable to join meetings on the video-conferencing platform on Wednesday.
The company's status page said all systems were operational.
Zoom said the glitch was likely due to a localized internet service issue.
The platform has seen a meteoric rise in users, thanks to remote work and online learning against the backdrop of stay-at-home orders.
Outage tracking website Downdetector.com showed nearly 2,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Zoom at its peak at 9 a.m. ET.
Separately, telecom operator Verizon Communication Inc S internet services were also affected earlier, with nearly 5,400 users registering complaints at 10 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector.
Verizon said it had since resolved the issue. "Earlier today there was an issue impacting internet routing for some of our customers. The issue has since been resolved," a spokesperson for the telecom operator said.
In January, thousands of users across the U.S. East Coast faced widespread internet outage from providers including Verizon, which disrupted services offered by Google, Amazon, Zoom, Slack and other technology firms.
TOP 5 STOCKS TO WATCHOUT:-
1.#BYTE DANCE - An Indian court on Tuesday dealt a blow to China's ByteDance by dismissing its plea to unblock its bank accounts which have been frozen by federal authorities investigating alleged tax evasion.
An Indian tax intelligence agency in mid-March ordered HSBC and Citibank in Mumbai to freeze accounts of ByteDance India as it probed some of the firm's financial dealings. ByteDance challenged the move in court saying the freeze amounts to harassment and was done illegally.
After a government counsel said ByteDance owed the authorities about 790 million rupees ($11 million), the High Court in Mumbai said the company will need to keep that amount blocked in a state-run bank.
That "account will be frozen", the two-judge bench said.
2.#LG ELECTRONICS:- LG Electronics' move to exit its loss-making mobile business is expected to create more opportunities for Samsung than its other rivals in the lucrative North American smartphone market, analysts said.
LG's U.S. market share currently stands at about 10%, research firms Gartner and Counterpoint estimated, adding it was stronger in markets where it partnered with telecom companies to include its devices as part of a mobile plan.
"Apple tends to cater to the higher end of the (U.S.) market; so it might grab a small portion of LG's sales," Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen said. "It's more likely that Samsung inherits a lot of it because both vendors compete across similar markets."
Globally, LG's market share shrank to 2% in 2020, a massive drop from its status as the world's third-largest smartphone maker behind Samsung Electronics and Apple Incduring its peak in 2013.
The company shipped 23 million phones last year, compared with Samsung's 256 million, according to Counterpoint.
Counterpoint analyst Tarun Pathak said LG was mostly competing in the mid-tier, as its flagship phones received a tepid market response.
"So it will be mostly the Chinese and mid-tier brands benefiting through the LG exit. In its key market like USA – Samsung, Motorola, HMD mostly, Alcatel to a lesser extent) will benefit, while Xiaomi Motorola will benefit in LATAM and Samsung in Korea," Pathak added.
Tech enthusiasts on Twitter lamented the exit of the once-ubiquitous name in the smartphone industry, with many crediting LG for pioneering the now-familiar features such as ultra-wide-angle camera and capacitive touchscreen in mobile devices.
"They didn't always ace every phone, but losing them means losing a competitor that was willing to try new things, even when they didn't work," popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee said in a tweet.
3.#ACER:-A global shortage of chips for mid-end consumer products is starting to ease and will be much better come the second half of the year, a senior executive at Taiwan's Acer Inc, the world's No. 5 PC vendor by shipments, said on Tuesday.
From delayed car deliveries to a supply shortfall in home appliances to costlier smartphones, businesses and consumers across the globe are facing the brunt of an unprecedented shortage in semiconductor microchips.
Originally concentrated in the auto industry, the shortage has now spread to a range of other consumer electronics, including smartphones, refrigerators and microwaves.
Andrew Hou, Acer's president for Pan-Asia Pacific Operations, told reporters in Taipei that since the problem first became apparent in the fourth quarter of last year, the supply chain has "jumped into action" as suppliers worked to address the situation.
Hou said he expected better supplies in the second quarter compared with the first quarter of this year, and that the situation in the second half will be better than the second quarter.
"That's what we are seeing at the moment," he added.
The shortage stems from a confluence of factors as carmakers, which shut plants during the COVID-19 pandemic last year, compete against the sprawling consumer electronics industry for chip supplies.
1.#BYTE DANCE - An Indian court on Tuesday dealt a blow to China's ByteDance by dismissing its plea to unblock its bank accounts which have been frozen by federal authorities investigating alleged tax evasion.
An Indian tax intelligence agency in mid-March ordered HSBC and Citibank in Mumbai to freeze accounts of ByteDance India as it probed some of the firm's financial dealings. ByteDance challenged the move in court saying the freeze amounts to harassment and was done illegally.
After a government counsel said ByteDance owed the authorities about 790 million rupees ($11 million), the High Court in Mumbai said the company will need to keep that amount blocked in a state-run bank.
That "account will be frozen", the two-judge bench said.
2.#LG ELECTRONICS:- LG Electronics' move to exit its loss-making mobile business is expected to create more opportunities for Samsung than its other rivals in the lucrative North American smartphone market, analysts said.
LG's U.S. market share currently stands at about 10%, research firms Gartner and Counterpoint estimated, adding it was stronger in markets where it partnered with telecom companies to include its devices as part of a mobile plan.
"Apple tends to cater to the higher end of the (U.S.) market; so it might grab a small portion of LG's sales," Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen said. "It's more likely that Samsung inherits a lot of it because both vendors compete across similar markets."
Globally, LG's market share shrank to 2% in 2020, a massive drop from its status as the world's third-largest smartphone maker behind Samsung Electronics and Apple Incduring its peak in 2013.
The company shipped 23 million phones last year, compared with Samsung's 256 million, according to Counterpoint.
Counterpoint analyst Tarun Pathak said LG was mostly competing in the mid-tier, as its flagship phones received a tepid market response.
"So it will be mostly the Chinese and mid-tier brands benefiting through the LG exit. In its key market like USA – Samsung, Motorola, HMD mostly, Alcatel to a lesser extent) will benefit, while Xiaomi Motorola will benefit in LATAM and Samsung in Korea," Pathak added.
Tech enthusiasts on Twitter lamented the exit of the once-ubiquitous name in the smartphone industry, with many crediting LG for pioneering the now-familiar features such as ultra-wide-angle camera and capacitive touchscreen in mobile devices.
"They didn't always ace every phone, but losing them means losing a competitor that was willing to try new things, even when they didn't work," popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee said in a tweet.
3.#ACER:-A global shortage of chips for mid-end consumer products is starting to ease and will be much better come the second half of the year, a senior executive at Taiwan's Acer Inc, the world's No. 5 PC vendor by shipments, said on Tuesday.
From delayed car deliveries to a supply shortfall in home appliances to costlier smartphones, businesses and consumers across the globe are facing the brunt of an unprecedented shortage in semiconductor microchips.
Originally concentrated in the auto industry, the shortage has now spread to a range of other consumer electronics, including smartphones, refrigerators and microwaves.
Andrew Hou, Acer's president for Pan-Asia Pacific Operations, told reporters in Taipei that since the problem first became apparent in the fourth quarter of last year, the supply chain has "jumped into action" as suppliers worked to address the situation.
Hou said he expected better supplies in the second quarter compared with the first quarter of this year, and that the situation in the second half will be better than the second quarter.
"That's what we are seeing at the moment," he added.
The shortage stems from a confluence of factors as carmakers, which shut plants during the COVID-19 pandemic last year, compete against the sprawling consumer electronics industry for chip supplies.