Aurelia Butler

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -California on Tuesday ordered General Motors (NYSE:GM)’ Cruise unit to remove its driverless cars from state roads, calling the vehicles a risk to the public and saying the company had “misrepresented” the safety of the technology.California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said it suspended Cruise’s autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing permit, ending efforts by the company for the time being to test the cars without safety drivers.”Based upon the performance of the vehicles, the department determines the manufacturer’s vehicles are not safe for the public’s operation,” the DMV said in a statement, citing “an unreasonable risk to public safety.”The DMV added that Cruise had “misrepresented any information related to safety of the autonomous technology of its vehicles.” The state agency said Cruise is allowed to challenge the suspension within five days. The company did not say if it planned to do that.The suspension, following a series of accidents involving Cruise vehicles, is a major setback to the self-driving business that GM has called a major growth opportunity and to the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry. But unionized transit workers and other critics of robotaxis hailed the suspension, which was effective immediately. “This could be a big blow to Cruise,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina. “This plays into the narrative about the technology and the companies failing. The whole industry will suffer as a result.”Cruise said in a statement: “We will be pausing operations of our driverless AVs in San Francisco. Ultimately, we develop and deploy autonomous vehicles in an effort to save lives.”Cruise said the DMV was reviewing an Oct. 2 incident, where one of its self-driving vehicles was braking but did not avoid striking a pedestrian previously struck by a hit-and-run driver.”When the AV tried to pull over, it continued before coming to a final stop, pulling the pedestrian forward,” Cruise said.”Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV’s response to this kind of extremely rare event,” it added. The DMV order said Cruise had not initially disclosed all video footage of the accident and said “Cruise’s vehicles may lack the ability to respond in a safe and appropriate manner during incidents involving a pedestrian.” Cruise could not immediately be reached to comment on DMV report the company had not initially shared all videos of the incident.GM executives have repeatedly called Cruise a giant growth opportunity, repeating that view during an earnings conference call on Tuesday before California’s DMV announced its decision.’TREMENDOUS UPSIDE'”We do believe that Cruise has tremendous opportunity to grow and expand,” GM CEO Mary Barra told analysts. “We … see tremendous upside opportunity and growth.” In June, Barra reiterated a forecast that Cruise could generate $50 billion a year in annual revenue by 2030. The company reported on Tuesday that it lost $723 million on Cruise during the third quarter. In her call before the ruling, Barra said Cruise robotaxis have better safety records than human drivers. In August, the DMV said it was investigating “concerning incidents” involving autonomous vehicles operated by Cruise in San Francisco and asked the company to take half its robotaxis off the roads. That month, a Cruise robotaxi was involved in a crash with an emergency vehicle in San Francisco.This month, U.S. auto safety regulators opened a probe into whether Cruise was taking sufficient precautions with autonomous robotaxis to safeguard pedestrians.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it has received two reports from Cruise of incidents in which pedestrians were injured, and identified two further incidents via videos posted on websites.NHTSA said its investigation into Cruise remains open, but declined to comment on the California DMV action.Two months ago, California allowed Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc’s Waymo and Cruise to take paying passengers day or night throughout San Francisco, a significant step. Waymo declined to comment on the DMV action.Critics of the self-driving technology pounced on the DMV decision. The Transport Workers union of America (TWU), which represents airline, railroad, and transit workers and has harshly criticized self-driving vehicles, said in a statement that companies like Cruise must meet measurable safety standards.”Despite the propaganda pushed by tech executives, Cruise has shown the world that robots are incapable of even coming close to achieving the high standards human operators meet each and every day,” TWU President John Samuelsen said. More

BEIJING (Reuters) -China is set to unleash fresh fiscal stimulus to shore up its economic recovery, drawing on a well-used playbook that relies heavily on debt and state spending but falls short on the deeper reforms called for by a growing number of analysts.Some government advisers are recommending China lifts its 2024 budget deficit target beyond the 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) set for this year, which would allow Beijing to issue more bonds to revive the economy, policy insiders and economists have told Reuters.The world’s second-largest economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter, improving the chances Beijing can meet its growth target of around 5% for 2023.But while the upbeat surprise gave battered China investors some cause for cheer, there are deeper concerns about the continued demise of private sector activity and the lack of longer-term reforms needed to shift the economy to consumer-led growth.For now, the focus remains on sustaining a fragile recovery to avoid economic disaster.”We need to make good preparations for next year and implement policies to stabilise growth. The foundation of economic recovery is not solid,” said an adviser to the cabinet who spoke on condition of anonymity.”For next year, we should still set a 5% GDP growth target.”China’s parliament is set to approve just over 1 trillion yuan ($137 billion) in additional sovereign debt issuance when it concludes a five-day meeting that began on Oct. 20, sources told Reuters.Such bonds will likely be used to fund water conservancy and flood prevention projects and come on top of an expected front-loading of 2024 local bond quotas.CALLS FOR AMBITIONChina’s feeble post-pandemic recovery has exposed growing structural constraints and raised a sense of urgency around reforms to put growth on a more sustainable footing.The debate about economic policy in China has heated up in recent months with some government advisers advocating reforms to help unleash new growth engines beyond property and infrastructure investment.For those looking for structural reforms, the focus is on policies that spur urbanisation and household spending power, reduce the reliance on investment and level the playing field between state-owned enterprises and private firms.Without such changes, economists warn China could be headed for a long-period of deflation and stagnant growth that fails to lift living standards for the country’s 1.4 billion people.However, near-term needs have largely overshadowed those calls for more politically ambitious reforms and instead centre on authorities stepping up fiscal and monetary support.Local governments have been told to complete the issuance of the 2023 quota of 3.8 trillion yuan in special local bonds by September to fund infrastructure.Some advisers say the central government has room to spend more as its debt as a share of GDP is just 21%, far lower than 76% for local governments.”Fiscal policy should still play the leading role next year,” said Xu Hongcai, deputy director of the economic policy commission at the state-backed China Association of Policy Science.”For next year, actual growth could be lower than 5% but it cannot be too low, otherwise some problems will become more striking, such as employment and incomes,” Xu told Reuters.The central bank, which delivered modest interest rate cuts and has pumped more cash into the economy in recent weeks, is constrained in how much it can ease monetary policy for fears of stoking capital flight and hurting the yuan, analysts said.”There is still room to cut interest rates and reserve requirement ratios but there is a question of sustainability,” said Guan Tao, global chief economist at BOC International and a former official at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).However, policy insiders believe more fundamental changes, especially a revival of market-based reforms, will be limited due to the political environment, under which the state has increased its control over the economy, including the private sector.An expected Communist party plenum, which is likely to take place in November and traditionally focuses on reforms, could disappoint those awaiting big changes.”We should push reforms as many problems are structural, but reforms are difficult to implement and require political will,” said one policy insider.($1 = 7.2987 Chinese yuan) More

The Washington, D.C.-based company expects annual revenue between $2.445 billion and $2.450 billion, compared with its prior estimate of $2.45 billion to $2.46 billion.Analysts on an average expect annual revenue of $2.46 billion, according to LSEG data.Surging mortgage rates and a tight supply of homes for sale have reduced affordability for many first-time buyers.Brokerage William Blair said last week its survey indicated low perception among real-estate agents on the value of paying for leads through home search portals because of factors including expensiveness and low lead quality. CoStar also forecast current-quarter revenue between $630 million and $635 million, the mid-point of which was below market estimates of $644.3 million. The company, which competes with home-listing service providers Zillow Group (NASDAQ:ZG) and Redfin (NASDAQ:RDFN), posted revenue of $624.7 million for the quarter ended Sept. 30, missing estimates of $625.9 million.Profit per share came in at 30 cents, unchanged from a year earlier.Last week, CoStar said it had proposed to buy OnTheMarket, the UK’s third-largest residential real estate platform, for 1.10 pound per share in cash, or about 100 million pounds ($121.63 million). ($1 = 0.8222 pounds) More

The 3.3 billion colones ($6.2 million) in question were first detected missing at the National Bank of Costa Rica in August through internal audits, and five employees have been suspended as a result, the bank’s interim manager, Jaime Murillo, told a press conference. The attorney general’s office is investigating five officials, including an accountant, supervisors and a guard.”We cannot say for sure that this is fraud or that someone stole this cash. We are not at that point yet. It is under investigation,” Murillo said, adding that such a situation had never before occurred in the bank’s 109-year history.The bank’s clients are not at risk, the official added. The bank reported that it does not know when or how the money went missing, adding that the details will be clearer after the attorney general’s office’s investigation and an internal investigation by the bank.($1 = 530.1500 colones) More

(Reuters) -Microsoft on Tuesday beat Wall Street estimates for fiscal first-quarter results in all segments, with its cloud computing and PC businesses growing as customers anticipate using its artificial-intelligence offerings.Its forecast also was mostly ahead of analyst targets.Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which has heavily backed and collaborated with OpenAI, has yet to roll out most of the products based on its work with the ChatGPT creator. But enthusiasm among corporate technology buyers for features like the ability to summarize heaps of email into a few bullet points or speedily complete lines of computer code helped the company’s revenue rise 13% to $56.5 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30. That compares with analysts’ consensus estimate of $54.52 billion, according to LSEG data.”The results indicated that artificial intelligence products are stimulating sales and already contributing to top and bottom-line growth,” said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com.Microsoft shares were up 3% in after-hours trading.In the reported quarter, revenue from Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud unit, which houses its Azure cloud-computing platform where much of the AI work will take place, grew to $24.3 billion, compared with analysts’ estimate of $23.49 billion, LSEG data showed. Azure revenue rose 29%, higher than a 26.2% growth estimate from market research firm Visible Alpha.Brett Iversen, Microsoft’s vice president for investor relations, said much of the quarterly sales growth came from customers rekindling their use of Microsoft’s cloud in anticipation of using AI services. “What AI is doing … is opening up either new conversations or extending existing conversations or getting us back in touch with customers that we maybe weren’t doing as much with,” Iversen told Reuters.By comparison, Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s cloud division missed estimates for third-quarter revenue on Tuesday as an uncertain economy and high interest rates led its customers to trim their budgets.”While a single quarter doesn’t a major trend make, this quarter’s cloud results from Microsoft and Google suggest that Azure is gaining share against its competition,” said Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research. “It could be that Microsoft’s very strong messaging on their (AI) technology is getting companies to consider them in a more serious way.”Microsoft said fiscal first-quarter profit was $2.99 per share, above analyst estimates of $2.65 per share, according to LSEG data.”There are some weaker areas; search advertising revenues, for one, is growing slower than most segments,” said Jeremy Goldman of research firm Insider Intelligence.Microsoft said search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased by 10%. It does not break out the revenue figure for these operations.Microsoft is weaving AI into its own products, such as the $30-a-month “Copilot” for its Microsoft 365 service that can summarize a day’s worth of emails into a quick update. While the tool is being shown only to a small number of pilot customers until it becomes available next month, it requires businesses to make a number of upgrades to their Microsoft-based systems in order to use Copilot.Investors are also tracking how much Microsoft spends on the massive data centers to power AI software. Microsoft said on Tuesday that fiscal first-quarter capital expenditures were $11.2 billion, up from $10.7 billion in the previous quarter, which itself was the biggest spend since at least fiscal 2016. Microsoft executives say that figure is likely to grow each quarter this fiscal year, putting the company on track to spend more than $44 billion.Sales of its Windows operating system and other products in the segment grew to $13.7 billion, compared with analysts’ consensus estimate of $12.82 billion, according to data from LSEG.The segment containing the LinkedIn social network and its office productivity software grew to $18.6 billion, compared with analysts’ consensus estimate of $18.20 billion, according to LSEG data.For its fiscal second quarter, Microsoft forecast an Azure growth rate of 26-27% in constant currency, above analyst estimates of 25.1% according to Visible Alpha. The company forecast revenue of $25.1 billion to $25.4 billion for the segment that contains Azure, ahead of estimates of $24.94 billion, according to LSEG data.In Microsoft’s Windows-based business segment, the company forecast fiscal second-quarter sales of $16.5 billion to $16.9 billion, above estimates of $14.52 billion, according to LSEG data. The forecast includes revenue from Microsoft’s Activision gaming acquisition, and it was not immediately clear if analyst forecasts included that addition.The company forecast sales of $18.8 billion to $19.1 billion for the business segment containing LinkedIn, mostly above expectations of $18.83 billion, according to LSEG data. More

(Reuters) -Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s cloud business crawled to its slowest in at least 11 quarters, sending the company’s stock down 5.7% after hours, even as sales at rival Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s cloud unit boomed.The drop in Google’s share price despite beating Wall Street estimates for profit and sales, shows how much investors want the company to deliver gains in artificial intelligence, and show the cloud business remains competitive against a more powerful Azure from Microsoft and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).com’s AWS. Fears of a slowing global economy have prompted companies to curb spending on cloud-related services, including expensive AI tools, which has slowed revenue growth at Google’s cloud unit to 22.5% in the third quarter, from 28% in the prior three-month period.Google Cloud third-quarter revenue rose 22.5% to $8.41 billion, the slowest growth since at least the first quarter of 2021. The cloud unit reported a operating income of $266 million, compared with an operating loss of $440 million a year ago. Wall Street expected cloud computing revenue of $8.62 billion.Finance chief Ruth Porat said in a conference call Tuesday that the third-quarter cloud growth is due to “customer optimization efforts,” without elaborating. By contrast, revenue from Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud unit, which houses the Azure cloud computing platform, grew to $24.3 billion, compared with analysts’ estimate of $23.49 billion, LSEG data showed. Azure revenue rose 29%, higher than a 26.2% growth estimate from market research firm Visible Alpha. Microsoft shares rose 5% after hours.”Despite Alphabet topping quarterly earnings and revenue estimates, investors were disappointed by the relatively weak performance at its Google cloud platform, which is at risk of falling further behind Azure and AWS,” Investing.com senior analyst Jesse Cohen.While advertising spending has been strong in some sectors such as retail and travel, industry executives and analysts have noted a pullback in budgets in some areas, affecting Alphabet’s major source of revenue.The company recorded ad revenue of $59.65 billion in the third quarter, compared with $54.48 billion a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected $59.12 billion in revenue from its advertising business. Within the company’s advertising segment, YouTube ads reported revenue of $7.95 billion compared with $7.07 billion last year.Alphabet reported a net profit of $19.69 billion for the July-Sept. period, compared with $13.91 billion a year earlier.Revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 stood at $76.69 billion, compared with estimates of $75.97 billion, according to LSEG data.Google said it spent $8.06 billion on capital expenses in the third quarter that was “overwhelmingly” the result of investments in its technical infrastructure. Servers were the largest component, followed by data centers due to a significant increase in AI computing investments, Porat said. Alphabet laid off roughly than 12,000 employees earlier this year, or about 6% of its global workforce, in an effort to cut staff amid a “different economic reality.” The company also laid off employees from its global recruiting team in September.The company disclosed that it recorded severance and related charges of $2.1 billion for the first nine months of the year. More