Economy

Southeast Asia’s largest telecom firm also said it expects its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to grow by low double digits for fiscal 2025.Last year, Telkomsel, the Indonesian associate of SingTel, agreed to merge with its parent’s IndiHome broadband arm to expand into Indonesia’s fixed broadband market.The firm’s top boss shed some light on SingTel’s progress with developing revenue streams to harness artificial intelligence and data centres. “Both NCS and Nxera (SingTel’s data centre brand) have a critical role to play in advancing AI adoption in the region and are continuing to invest in AI infrastructure and capabilities to better serve enterprise and governments,” the group’s Chief Executive Officer Yuen Kuan Moon said. “We will continue scaling NCS and building out Nxera’s data centres which will commence operations from mid-2025 to meet increasing demand,” Moon added. SingTel’s Australian unit Optus, currently embroiled in a legal battle with the country’s competition watchdog, reported interim operating revenue of A$4.02 billion ($2.62 billion), in line with A$4.02 billion reported a year ago.The company said net profit for the six months ended Sept. 30 was S$1.23 billion, as compared to S$2.14 billion last year and missing a Visible Alpha estimate of S$1.37 billion. The company declared an interim dividend of 7 Singapore cents per share, higher than the 5.2 Singapore cents per share declared a year earlier.($1 = 1.3384 Singapore dollars)($1 = 1.5321 Australian dollars) More

Shares traded down 2.1% as of 0025 GMT, after falling as much as 2.5% to 51,700 won, the lowest since June 24, 2020, while the broader KOSPI market fell 1.1%. The South Korean chipmaker, down 34% in the year-to-date, is on course to post its worst annual performance in more than two decades. Rival SK Hynix has risen 32% so far this year, and U.S. chipmaker Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has gained 199%. Last month, Samsung apologised for its disappointing profit, since it has lagged rivals in tapping booming demand for artificial intelligence chips, as competition from Chinese companies grows. More

The European company had acquired Grubhub in 2020 in an all-stock deal for $7.8 billion, creating the world’s largest food delivery company outside China at the time. A deal for Grubhub could be finalized imminently, assuming the talks do not fall apart, the report said, adding that Grubhub is likely to be valued below $1 billion in any deal. Buying Grubhub could lift Wonder’s revenue and offer a direct source delivery drivers and related technology, the report said. Grubhub, Just Eat Takeaway and Wonder did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. More

BENGALURU (Reuters) – Malaysia’s economic growth likely slowed but only modestly in the third quarter compared to a year earlier as solid private consumption and construction activity cushioned the impact of declining mining output, a Reuters poll of economists found.The median prediction of 25 economists in the Nov. 6-12 poll showed the Southeast Asian economy grew 5.3% year-on-year in the July-September period, matching the advance estimate but down from 5.9% in the previous quarter.Growth was largely driven by a robust expansion in the manufacturing, construction, and agriculture sectors.”Malaysia will likely show resilient economic growth in Q3. The services sector likely experienced a robust, broad-based expansion, although at a slightly slower pace than in Q2. The manufacturing sector was bolstered by the electronics segment, benefitting from an ongoing global tech upcycle,” said Taimur Baig, chief economist at DBS Bank.”The main drag to overall real GDP growth in Q3 2024 was from the contraction in the mining sector. The positive growth drivers are likely to sustain into 2025, and a favourable base effect in Q4 2024 should see real GDP growth recover to 5.3% for full-year 2024 from 3.6% in 2023.”A separate Reuters poll published last month predicted Malaysia’s growth to average 4.7% next year, within Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) 4.5-5.5% forecast.However, a slowdown in global demand, especially from China – the country’s major trading partner – saw Malaysian exports contract in September, and could weigh on growth prospects.U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on imports from every country is also expected to slow the country’s exports.”There are some key headwinds over the horizon. The most prominent risk being the potential for a blanket U.S. import tariff on the rest of the world. If implemented, it will substantially dampen global trade activity,” said Woon Khai Jhek, senior economist at RAM Ratings. More

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s wholesale inflation accelerated in October as renewed yen falls pushed up import costs for some goods, data showed on Wednesday, complicating the central bank’s decision on how soon to raise interest rates.The corporate goods price index (CGPI), which measures the price that companies charge each other for goods and services, rose 3.4% in October from a year earlier, Bank of Japan data showed, above market forecasts for a 3.0% gain.It followed a 3.1% increase in September.The yen-based import price index fell 2.2% year-on-year last month, less than the 2.5% drop in September, the data showed. On a month-on-month basis, the index rose 3.0% after falling 2.8% in September.A spike in the price of rice, coupled with the increasing cost of nonferrous metals, food and oil, pushed up overall wholesale inflation, the data showed, a sign companies remained under pressure from rising raw material costs.The BOJ ended negative interest rates in March and raised short-term interest rates to 0.25% in July on the view Japan was making progress towards sustainably achieving its 2% inflation target.BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda has stressed the bank’s readiness to raise interest rates again if inflation becomes driven more by robust domestic demand and higher wages, rather than rising raw material costs. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Even with some recent bouts of volatility, it appears money market liquidity levels remain robust, a top New York Federal Reserve official said on Tuesday, suggesting the case for the Fed to press on with its balance sheet drawdown can proceed.While the volatility that struck markets at the end of September is something that argues for central bankers to keep a close eye on markets, even with the churn, “I want to make clear that there is considerable evidence that reserve supply remains abundant – quarter-end pressures do not appear to be induced by a scarcity of reserves,” said Roberto Perli, who manages the implementation of monetary policy at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in the text of a speech. “Although we are monitoring events closely, there are few obvious and foreseeable risks to our continuing to implement monetary policy efficiently and effectively” at the command of the rate setting Federal Open Market Committee, he said.The Fed has for just over two years been allowing Treasury and mortgage bonds to mature and not be replaced, in a process called quantitative tightening, or QT. That has taken Fed holdings from a peak of $9 trillion to the current $7 trillion mark.Fed officials have widely argued they have plenty of room to run in shrinking holdings and are closely watching market indicators for signs of money market tightness. Some in markets have argued that stress seen on the final business day of September, with the end of the third quarter, signals a tightness that could auger an imminent QT end. Instead, Perli, in his remarks, said quarter-end pressures were contained and usage of the Fed’s Standing Repo Facility was modest historically speaking.“I, like many market participants, have observed the greater levels of volatility in overnight repo around financial reporting dates like quarter-end,” Perli said, while adding “this slow rise in repo rates has been modest and orderly overall.” He added the rise in repo rates “is an entirely expected and arguably healthy development – a sign that money markets are normalizing as liquidity declines and as Treasury net issuance continues to grow.” The QT process aims to take out liquidity added during the coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath, and has been part of a broader normalization of monetary policy. The fate of QT has been in the minds of many observers because the Fed is now in a rate cutting scenario.The Fed is aiming to leave the financial system with enough liquidity to allow for normal market volatility while affording it firm control over the federal funds rate, its chief lever for achieving its job and inflation goals. More

(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday that insurance magnate Greg Lindberg had pleaded guilty to a $2 billion fraud and money laundering scheme operated through a network of companies based in North Carolina, Bermuda, Malta, and elsewhere.Lindberg, 54, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the U.S. and one count of money laundering in connection with a scheme to defraud insurance regulators and policyholders lasting from 2016 through 2019, the Justice Department said in a statement. More

(Reuters) -The Federal Reserve’s policy rate continues to act as a brake on the resilient labor market and on inflation that is still above the 2% target, two U.S. central bankers said on Tuesday, a view that appears to argue for more interest rate cuts, even as both signaled they were not ready to judge how fast or by how much.”In my judgment we are still in a modestly contractionary stance, but ultimately the economy will guide us, in terms of how far we are needing to go” in cutting the Fed’s benchmark for short-term borrowing costs, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said at a Yahoo Finance event.Speaking earlier, Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin called the current level of rates “somewhat less restrictive” than it had been, and said he could see scenarios where demand rises and the central bank needs to focus on containing inflation, and others where businesses start laying off workers and it needs to turn more to protecting the job market.”With the economy now in a good place and interest rates off their recent peak but also off their historic lows, the Fed is in position to respond appropriately regardless of how the economy evolves,” Barkin said at an event in Baltimore. The Fed cut its policy rate last week by a quarter of a percentage point to the 4.50%-4.75% range. Short-term borrowing costs are now 75 basis points below where they were two months ago, just before the central bank started reducing rates to bring them more in line with falling inflation and what appeared to be a quickly cooling labor market.In September, Fed policymaker projections were consistent with another quarter-percentage-point rate cut in December, and four more like-sized reductions next year, bringing the policy rate to the 3.25%-3.50% range.  Since then, a lot has happened that could complicate the central bank’s next steps.Inflation by the Fed’s targeted measure was 2.1% in September, just above its target, but measures of underlying inflation that strip out volatile energy and food prices have been stuck higher, with little sign of recent progress. Economists expect more of the same when the U.S. Labor Department releases the consumer price index for October on Wednesday.Monthly job gains have dropped, but unemployment, at 4.1%, is low by historical standards. Policymakers are watching for signs of further weakening – which would suggest the need for more rate cuts – or of continued resilience, and they will get just one more monthly employment report before their Dec. 17-18 meeting.NEW ADMINISTRATIONRepublican President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s election also creates fresh uncertainty. Trump, who will take over from Democratic President Joe Biden in January, has promised to cut taxes, impose new tariffs on imports, and deport a record number of immigrants. While financial markets have generally moved to price in faster economic growth and fewer interest rate cuts as a result, central bankers say they can’t plan a response until it’s clear exactly what policies will be enacted.Asked what could prompt the Fed to pause rate cuts at the December meeting, Kashkari said he feels there is too little time between now and then for the data to show a reheating of the labor market.”I think there’d have to be a surprise on the inflation front to change the outlook so dramatically,” Kashkari said. “The bigger question long run is where are we going to settle?”Kashkari said he believes the level of borrowing costs that neither stimulates nor restricts the economy – the so-called neutral rate – is likely higher than in the past, perhaps because productivity has increased. Although a higher neutral rate could be one argument for fewer rate cuts ahead, Kashkari steered clear of making predictions, as did Barkin. “I think we all agree we are above neutral now,” Kashkari said. “But over the course of the next year, we’re going to get a lot more information about where neutral is.” More