SHANGHAI, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Several Shanghai residents received fresh stay-at-home orders and mandatory testing notices on Tuesday as authorities raced to trace contacts linked to a COVID-positive woman whose visit to the city's Disney Resort prompted its temporary lockdown.

In the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, meanwhile, Apple iPhone manufacturer Foxconn announced a big increase in bonuses to stem an exodus of workers rattled by coronavirus curbs at its vast facility there, as China's strict zero-COVID policy exacts a rising toll on the world's No.2 economy.

Rising unease in China's commercial hub of Shanghai comes as the country's daily local case count hit 2,719, a small figure by global standards but its highest level since Aug 17, prompting other cities such as Guangzhou and Dandong to tighten measures, although Zhengzhou unexpectedly eased its quasi-lockdown.

The Shanghai Disney Resort on Monday abruptly shut its gates, locking in all visitors at the time and only allowing them to leave, hours later, after they had tested negative for the virus.

Several city residents told Reuters they were notified on Tuesday that they or their children could not go to work or school if they had visited Disney since Thursday and were ordered to take daily tests for the next three days.

One said she was informed that her family might have to go into central quarantine.

Marvis He was among Disney visitors caught up in the resort's lockdown, having flown in from Shenzhen in hopes of enjoying the park's Halloween themed fireworks.

"I feel disappointed, we waited so long in the park ... but we didn't get to see anything and only got to get out at 10 p.m.," she told Reuters as she departed the resort.

"We were also cold and hungry," her companion added. City authorities said the resort was shut after a 31-year-old woman, who had visited the park among other places in recent days, tested positive for the virus.

GOING IT ALONE

While much of the world has started to open up, China has vowed to stick to its zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19 with lockdowns and mass testing imposed when even a single case is found.

The policy has met with growing discontent from the public and businesses, and been blamed for contributing to weak growth.

"COVID-zero changes the calculus of doing business within China," said Michael Hart, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China in Beijing.

"Interruption from COVID-zero does appear to be the number one concern for our members, and number two is probably the slowing economy, mostly caused by interruption from COVID-zero."

Nomura estimated lockdowns and restrictions in 28 cities last week, affecting almost 208 million people, or 8.5% of China's GDP.

Foxconn has been one of the biggest corporate names affected by a quasi-lockdown of Zhengzhou, a major logistics hub in central China.

The company put its 200,000 workers at its plant in the city under closed-loop management on Oct. 13, triggering complaints from employees about food and their treatment and prompting many to leave.

In recent days, videos appearing to show departing Foxconn workers laden with luggage and walking along village roads towards their home towns have gone viral on Chinese social media.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the footage but workers have shared similar accounts with Reuters.

A source told Reuters on Monday the production of iPhones at the plant could slump by as much as 30% next month due to the situation. Foxconn on Tuesday announced it would quadruple daily bonuses for some of the plant's workers to 400 yuan ($55) should they continue to work there through November.

Zhengzhou unexpectedly lifted its quasi-lockdown on its nearly 13 million people, even as new locally transmitted cases more than doubled on Monday from the day before.

"For over 10 days, we have persevered and fought together, fighting the disease, advancing and retreating together, and working hard together, and finally we are ushering in a large-scale restoration of normal life and production in Zhengzhou," the city's counter-epidemic task-force wrote in an online letter to residents.

The current outbreak in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, flared up after the Oct. 1-7 National Day holidays, prompting local authorities to start imposing the lockdown of various districts. ($1 = 7.3123 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Casey Hall, Engen Tham, Winni Zhou, Brenda Goh, Ryan Woo, Wang Jing, Liz Lee and Bernard Orr; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Lincoln Feast)

출처 : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wrapup-1-shanghai-disney-visitors-044757825.html

Netflix wants to make it as simple as possible for people who have been using someone else’s account — possibly in violation of the company’s terms of use — to set up a separate paid membership.

On Monday, Netflix is launching Profile Transfer, a feature that lets anyone on an existing account migrate their profile to a brand-new account while preserving all of their personalized recommendations, viewing history, My List, saved games and other settings.

Profile Transfer, which Netflix says has been “much requested” by customers, will roll out to all members worldwide starting Monday. Users will be notified by email when Profile Transfer becomes available on their account.

In announcing the wide availability of the feature, Netflix said it’s intended to accommodate various life events, such as people moving out of a household or relationships ending, without forcing them to rebuild a profile from scratch. But it’s also a way to encourage Netflix viewers who have been mooching off someone else’s account (and aren’t in the same household) to turn legit.

Netflix developed the profile-transfer feature for a test launched in March in three countries — Chile, Costa Rica and Peru — to address illicit password sharing. In that test, members who share their accounts with people outside their households are able to pick lower-cost options to add those password-piggybackers as “Extra Members.” As part of that test, Netflix lets subscribers transfer user profiles to either a new account or an Extra Member account. In August, Netflix launched a separate test of an “add a home” feature (in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) to enable access for non-household users at a price lower than a full standalone membership.

According to Netflix’s terms of service, an account “may not be shared with individuals beyond your household.” The company has estimated that Netflix passwords are being shared in violation of its rules with more than 100 million non-paying households worldwide, including more than 30 million in the U.S. and Canada alone.

Netflix’s moves to try to wring revenue from password-sharers comes as the streaming giant hit a wall in subscriber growth — and in fact shed 1.2 million subscribers in the first six months of 2022. The company is scheduled to report third-quarter 2022 earnings Tuesday, Oct. 18, after market close.

To use the new profile transfer feature, hover over your profile icon in the dropdown menu on the homepage and select the “Transfer Profile” option. Users also can turn off Profile Transfer in account settings.

출처 : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netflix-launches-profile-transfer-feature-170000106.htm

Facebook parent Meta (META) reported its Q3 earnings on Wednesday meeting expectations on revenue and offering lighter than expected guidance for Q4.

Here are the most important numbers from the report compared to what Wall Street was expecting from Facebook's parent company, as compiled by Bloomberg:

• Revenue: $27.7 billion versus $27.4 billion expected
• Earnings Per Share (EPS): $1.64 versus $1.89 expected
• Facebook Daily Active Users (DAUs): 1.98 billion versus 1.86 billion expected
• Facebook Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 2.96 billion versus 2.97 expected
• Reality Labs operating loss: $3.67 billion versus $3.09 billion expected

Shares of the company fell more than 11% following the report.

Meta Q4 revenue guidance came in between $30 billion and $32.5 billion, while the Street was expecting $32.2 billion.

The company also announced that it will be pacing Reality Lab investments beyond 2023 but that spending will be significantly higher next year.

A digital advertising slowdown is hitting social media companies like Meta especially hard. Shares of the tech giant are off as much as 60% year-to-date as businesses pull back on ad spending amid rising inflation and interest rates.

It's not just Meta that's taking a beating, though. On Tuesday, Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) reported a substantial miss on YouTube ad revenues.

Snap (SNAP) also issued a rough Q3 earnings report saying that revenue growth continues to decline and that average revenue per user fell for the quarter.

Meta also continues to contend with Apple's iOS privacy changes, which prevent the company from tracking users across third-party websites and apps.

All of this comes as Meta works to transform itself from a social media business to a metaverse-first firm. During its Meta Connect event earlier this month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined Meta's future including enterprise partnerships with Microsoft (MSFT) and Accenture (ACN). The tech giant also announced its new Quest Pro headset, though, it starts at $1,500.

But Zuckerberg's decision to focus on the metaverse, which cost the company $10 billion in 2021, has met criticism. Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner recently sent an open letter to Zuckerberg calling on him to cut spending on the metaverse and reduce employee headcount.

출처 : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-thid-quarter-earnings-130316557.html?jr=on

NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Nasdaq Inc (NDAQ.O) has put the brakes on initial public offering (IPO) preparations of at least four small Chinese companies while it investigates short-lived stock rallies of such firms following their debuts, according to lawyers and bankers who work on such stock launches.

The stock exchange operator's actions come amid a surge in the shares of Chinese companies that raise small amounts, typically $50 million or less, in their IPO. These stocks rise as much as 2,000% in their debuts, only to nosedive in the days that follow, bruising investors who are bold enough to speculate on penny stocks.

Douglas Ellenoff, a corporate and securities attorney at Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP, said he was informed by the Nasdaq that certain IPOs will not be allowed to proceed "until they determined what has been the aberrational trading activity in certain Chinese issuers earlier this year."

"These were last-minute phone calls, just as we thought we were going to go somewhere with the deals," Ellenoff said.

Nasdaq started asking the advisers of small Chinese IPO candidates questions in mid-September. The questions concerned the identity of their existing shareholders, where they reside, how much they are investing and if they were offered interest-free debt so they can participate, according to one of the bankers, Dan McClory, who is head of equity capital markets at Boustead Securities.

The lawyers and bankers spoke to Reuters on condition that the names of the four companies whose IPOs were halted not be disclosed.

It is not clear what action the Nasdaq will take once it completes its probe and whether all or some of the halted IPOs will be allowed to continue. A Nasdaq spokesman declined to comment.

Seven sources who work on IPOs of small Chinese companies spoke to Reuters on the condition that neither they nor their clients be identified. These sources said that the ephemeral stock rallies were caused by a few overseas investors who concealed their identities and snapped up most of the shares in the offerings, creating the perception that the debuts were in demand.

As a result, Chinese IPOs in the United States have returned this year on average a staggering 426% in their first day of trading, compared with 68% for all other IPOs, according to data from Dealogic.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other U.S. financial regulators have yet to announce a case of successfully prosecuting such pump-and-dump schemes because Chinese companies and their overseas bankers have so far been effective in carrying them out secretly, the seven sources said. An SEC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nasdaq's intervention underscores how liquidity standards it adopted in the last three years to prevent stock manipulation in small IPOs have loopholes that Chinese companies are exploiting. The rules dictate that a company going public should have at least 300 investors holding at least 100 shares each, totaling a minimum of $2,500.

Yet these requirements have not been sufficient to prevent trading manipulation in some penny stocks. Small Chinese companies have been attracted to Nasdaq's exchange rather than the New York Stock Exchange because the former has traditionally been the venue of red-hot technology startups - an image these companies often try to project.

"Almost all of these microcap IPOs are 'story' stocks, where the promoters try to convince unsophisticated retail investors that this could be the next Moderna or this could be the next Facebook," said Jay Ritter, a University of Florida professor who studies IPOs.

There have been 57 listings of small Chinese companies in the last five years, up from 17 listings in the prior five years, according to Dealogic. So far this year there have been nine such listings despite the U.S. IPO market facing its worst drought in nearly two decades due to market volatility fueled by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to fight inflation.

McClory said the trend highlights the looser regulatory requirements for listings in the United States compared with China. "It is virtually impossible for these companies to list onshore in China, and now the Hong Kong market has completely shut down as well," he said.

출처: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/nasdaq-halts-ipos-small-chinese-companies-it-probes-stock-rallies-2022-10-22/

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Tesla has cut starter prices for its Model 3 and Model Y cars by as much as 9% in China, reversing a trend of increases across the industry amid signs of softening demand in the world's largest auto market.

The price cuts, posted in listings on the electric vehicle (EV) giant's China website on Monday, are the first by Tesla in China in 2022, and come after Tesla began offering limited incentives to buyers who opted for its insurance last month.

Shares of the Austin, Texas-based firm were down 4.9% at $203.9 in early trade.

The price cuts also follows Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk's comment last week that "a recession of sorts" was under way in China and Europe, and Tesla said it would miss its vehicle delivery target this year.

Musk told analysts last week that demand was strong in the current quarter and that he expected Tesla to be "recession-resilient".

China Merchants Bank International (CMBI) said Tesla's price cuts underlined the growing competitive risk for EV makers in China, with industry-wide sales projected to slow into 2023.

"The price cuts underscore the possible price war which we have been emphasising since August," said Shi Ji, an analyst with CMBI.

Tesla had cut prices in China last year in an effort to be more competitive in the country, while in the United States, its largest market, the EV maker has raised prices over the past year on higher cost of raw materials.

Data on Monday showed retail sales in China grew 2.5% in September, below the expected 3.3% rise and less than half of August's 5.4% growth.

The U.S. automaker and several Chinese rivals have hiked prices several times since last year amid rising raw material costs. But Tesla has regularly adjusted prices of its cars in China, including reductions, reflecting government subsidies.

Tesla is now China's third best-selling EV maker after BYD Motor and SAIC-GM-Wuling, and is the only foreign player in the top 15 list published by the China Passenger Car Association(CPCA).

"The price cut is primarily due to overall soft auto demand in China due to macro condition and competition with leading local player BYD," U.S. Tiger Securities analyst Bo Pei said.

Pei said XPeng, Nio Inc and Li Auto will have to follow or face greater pressure on volumes.

Tesla told Reuters it was adjusting prices in line with costs. Capacity utilisation at its Shanghai Gigafactory has improved, while the supply chain remains stable despite the impact on the economy of China's stringent zero-COVID restrictions, leading to lower costs, it said.

The starting price for the Model 3 sedan was reduced to 265,900 yuan ($36,727) from 279,900 yuan, while that for the Model Y sport utility vehicle was cut to 288,900 yuan from 316,900 yuan, the product prices listed on its Chinese website showed.

Tesla upgraded its Shanghai factory earlier this year, after which it delivered 83,135 China-made EVs in September, setting an output record for the plant since production began in December 2019.

출처 : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-cuts-starting-prices-model-003412844.html

Netflix (NFLX) reported its fiscal third quarter earnings on Tuesday after the bell, crushing expectations and prompting shares to surge more than 14% in after-hours trading.

Here are Netflix's third quarter results compared to Wall Street's consensus estimates, as compiled by Bloomberg:

• Revenue: $7.93 billion versus $7.85 billion expected
• Adj. earnings per share (EPS): $3.10 versus $2.22 expected
• Subscriber net additions: +2.41 million versus +1 million estimated

In a note to shareholders, the company said, "After a challenging first half, we believe we’re on a path to reaccelerate growth. The key is pleasing members. It’s why we’ve always focused on winning the competition for viewing every day. When our series and movies excite our members, they tell their friends, and then more people watch, join and stay with us."

The company attributed its success in the quarter to several TV and film hits, including "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," "Stranger Things S4," "Extraordinary Attorney Woo," "The Gray Man," and "Purple Hearts."

Additionally, Netflix noted its streaming prowess relative to competitors, writing, "Our competitors are investing heavily to drive subscribers and engagement, but building a large, successful streaming business is hard - we estimate they are all losing money, with combined 2022 operating losses well over $10 billion, vs. Netflix's $5 to $6 billion annual operating profit."

Tuesday's earnings marked the first time this year the company has added subscribers, which mostly came from outside of the United States. In the first and second quarters, the company lost 200,000 and 970,000 subscribers, respectively.

The company said it will stop giving guidance on paid memberships moving forward due to its introduction of new revenue streams. For now, though, it estimated an addition of 4.5 million subscribers next quarter (above prior forecasts of 3.9 million.)

To help stem earlier subscriber losses, the company plans to launch an ad-supported subscription tier in November.

Most analysts have remained bullish on the profitability aspects of the new ad tier. UBS analyst John Hodulik recently upped his price target on the stock by $52 to $250 a share, and JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth said that the ad tier's lower price point ($6.99 in the U.S.) indicates Netflix's confidence in advertising revenue.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet (who maintains a Buy rating on the stock) said that the upcoming ad tier "could point to material upside" in free cash flow, and Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney predicted that ad-supported will bring in $1 to $2 billion in incremental revenue by 2024.

On a call prior to the ad tier announcement, Netflix Worldwide Advertising President Jeremi Gorman said the platform "nearly sold out all of its [ad] inventory" globally for launch — bucking the trend of a global ad spend slowdown.

Despite the earnings beat, the company lowered its guidance, citing foreign exchange (FX) headwinds as the U.S. dollar continues to strengthen against most major currencies.

"Based on our YTD actuals and Q4 guidance, we estimate that this appreciation since January 1, 2022 will negatively impact our full year 2022 revenue and operating income by ~$1 billion and $0.8 billion, respectively," the company noted in the release

출처 : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netflix-earnings-ad-tier-subscribers-114746422.html