Connect with us

Published

on

Starbucks has seen nearly $12 billion erased from its market value during the past month as sales reportedly have slowed amid tighter consumer wallets and growing labor strife — with some even speculating the chain has been hit by boycotts over the Israel-Gaza war.

Investors have grown wary that consumers will splash out on a pricey cup of joe during the holiday season when budgets get tighter, according to Bloomberg, citing sales data from JPMorgan analysts that signaled a material slowing at Starbucks in November.

Despite delivering better-than-expected sales growth of 8% in its fiscal fourth quarter, the coffeehouse’s share price has decelerated on a week-over-week basis, following trends in the snack and coffee industry.

When the markets opened on Monday, Starbucks’ stock dropped 1.6%, declining for a 11th consecutive session in what is the longest losing streak since Starbucks public debut in 1992. 

The rout erased 9.4% of Starbucks market value, a decline of nearly $12 billion.

As of early trading hours Thursday, the Seattle-based company’s share price was down roughly 6.5%, to $96.90, on a monthly basis.

When the coffeehouse chain’s share price started to decline, it was putting on its annual Red Cup Day.

The promotional event saw baristas handing out free red-colored, reusable, holiday-themed cups to customers on their coffee purchases on Nov. 16, though the festivities were overshadowed by a walkout.

Hundreds of workers represented by the Workers United union walked off the job on the notoriously busy day — demanding improved staffing and schedules — while non-unionized staffers endured one of the most infamously hard, understaffed days, as drink orders pile up and employees end up on the receiving end of abuse from frustrated customers over long wait times.

The protest was just the latest in Starbucks’ deep-rooted disagreements with the union.

Last month, the two entities filed warring lawsuits over the union’s social media post declaring “Solidarity with Palestine!” in the wake of Hamas deadly attacks.

After Workers United published the controversial statement in a since-deleted post on X last month — where it boasts nearly 100,000 followers — Starbucks swiftly moved to distance itself from the organization.

We unequivocally condemn acts of terrorism, hate and violence, and disagree with the statements and views expressed by Workers United and its members. Workers Uniteds words and actions belong to them, and them alone,” Starbucks said at the time.

The response was interpreted as a display of support for Israel over Palestine, prompting calls for a boycott. Despite Starbucks’ efforts to quell boycott calls, the hashtag #boycottstarbucks is still trending on social media.

According to TikTok’s Creative Center, a database that details user insights, the hashtag has been used in some 16,000 times over the past 30 days, generating a combined 167 million views.

On X, other social media users appear to be cheering Starbucks’ decline.

“I haven’t gone to Starbucks in months due to the boycotts and I am so happy to see less people there too,” a user who goes by Kate wrote.

“WE WON,” another chimed in while a slew of commenters said the slash in market cap was “deserved.”

When The Post reached out to Starbucks for comment, a company spokesperson pointed to a message from its chief partner officer, Sara Kelly, posted on Starbucks’ website last month.

“Starbucks unequivocally condemns acts of hate, terrorism and violence,” Kelly wrote. “As a leadership team, we want to again express our deepest sympathy for those who have been killed, wounded, displaced and impacted following the heinous acts of terror, escalating violence and hate against the innocent in Israel and Gaza.”

Though Starbucks’ total value was down, its store sales at its 35,000-plus locations worldwide rose 8% for its 2023 fiscal year that ended in November.

Earlier this month, Starbucks said it would raise hourly pay for its US retail workers by at least 3% from 2024 after Workers United’s repeated pleas to give baristas an increased hourly base wage.

Staffers affiliated with Workers United which represents Starbucks staffers at 340 Starbucks locations across the US criticized the increase, calling it tone deaf given Starbucks recently-reported increases in revenue and the recent wage hikes won by auto workers.

Meanwhile, one of union’s founding organizers, Jaz Brisack, has previously voiced support for Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who was involved in bombings in Jerusalem in 1969 and 1970.

Brisack penned an op-ed in the Daily Mississippian in 2017 that referred to Odeh as a political prisoner.

Odeh was freed by Israel as part of a prisoner exchange in 1980 but arrested in the US in 2013 after illegally entering the country in the 1990s.

She was deported to Jordan in 2017.

Continue Reading

Technology

Alibaba posts profit beat as China looks to prop up tepid consumer spend

Published

on

By

Alibaba posts profit beat as China looks to prop up tepid consumer spend

Alibaba Offices In Beijing

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba on Friday beat profit expectations in its September quarter, but sales fell short as sluggishness in the world’s second-largest economy hit consumer spending.

Alibaba said net income rose 58% year on year to 43.9 billion yuan ($6.07 billion) in the company’s quarter ended Sept. 30, on the back of the performance of its equity investments. This compares with an LSEG forecast of 25.83 billion yuan.

“The year-over-year increases were primarily attributable to the mark-to-market changes from our equity investments, decrease in impairment of our investments and increase in income from operations,” the company said of the annual profit jump in its earnings statement.

Revenue, meanwhile, came in at 236.5 billion yuan, 5% higher year on year but below an analyst forecast of 238.9 billion yuan, according to LSEG data.

The company’s New York-listed shares have gained ground this year to date, up more than 13%. The stock fell more than 2% in morning trading on Friday, after the release of the quarterly earnings.

Sales sentiment

Investors are closely watching the performance of Alibaba’s main business units, Taobao and Tmall Group, which reported a 1% annual uptick in revenue to 98.99 billion yuan in the September quarter.

The results come at a tricky time for Chinese commerce businesses, given a tepid retail environment in the country. Chinese e-commerce group JD.com also missed revenue expectations on Thursday, according to Reuters.

Markets are now watching whether a slew of recent stimulus measures from Beijing, including a five-year 1.4 trillion yuan package announced last week, will help resuscitate the country’s growth and curtail a long-lived real estate market slump.

The impact on the retail space looks promising so far, with sales rising by a better-than-expected 4.8% year on year in October, while China’s recent Singles’ Day shopping holiday — widely seen as a barometer for national consumer sentiment — regained some of its luster.

Alibaba touted “robust growth” in gross merchandise volume — an industry measure of sales over time that does not equate to the company’s revenue — for its Taobao and Tmall Group businesses during the festival, along with a “record number of active buyers.”

“Alibaba’s outlook remains closely aligned with the trajectory of the Chinese economy and evolving regulatory policies,” ING analysts said Thursday, noting that the company’s Friday report will shed light on the Chinese economy’s growth momentum.

The e-commerce giant’s overseas online shopping businesses, such as Lazada and Aliexpress, meanwhile posted a 29% year-on-year hike in sales to 31.67 billion yuan.  

Cloud business accelerates

Alibaba’s Cloud Intelligence Group reported year-on-year sales growth of 7% to 29.6 billion yuan in the September quarter, compared with a 6% annual hike in the three-month period ended in June. The slight acceleration comes amid ongoing efforts by the company to leverage its cloud infrastructure and reposition itself as a leader in the booming artificial intelligence space.

“Growth in our Cloud business accelerated from prior quarters, with revenues from public cloud products growing in double digits and AI-related product revenue delivering triple-digit growth. We are more confident in our core businesses than ever and will continue to invest in supporting long-term growth,” Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said in a statement Friday.

Stymied by Beijing’s sweeping 2022 crackdown on large internet and tech companies, Alibaba last year overhauled the division’s leadership and has been shaping it as a future growth driver, stepping up competition with rivals including Baidu and Huawei domestically, and Microsoft and OpenAI in the U.S.

Alibaba, which rolled out its own ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwen last year, this week unveiled its own AI-powered search tool for small businesses in Europe and the Americas, and clinched a key five-year partnership to supply cloud services to Indonesian tech giant GoTo in September.

Speaking at the Apsara Conference in September, Alibaba’s Wu said the company’s cloud unit is investing “with unprecedented intensity, in the research and development of AI technology and the building of its global infrastructure,” noting that the future of AI is “only beginning.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Alibaba’s Cloud Intelligence Group reported quarterly revenue of 29.6 billion yuan in the September quarter.

Continue Reading

Technology

Elon Musk’s xAI raising up to $6 billion to purchase 100,000 Nvidia chips for Memphis data center

Published

on

By

Elon Musk's xAI raising up to  billion to purchase 100,000 Nvidia chips for Memphis data center

Elon Musk listens as US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. 

Allison Robbert | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI is raising up to $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation, according to CNBC’s David Faber.

Sources told Faber that the funding, which should close early next week, is a combination of $5 billion expected from sovereign funds in the Middle East and $1 billion from other investors, some of whom may want to re-up their investments.

The money will be used to acquire 100,000 Nvidia chips, per sources familiar with the situation. Tesla‘s Full Self Driving is expected to rely on the new Memphis supercomputer.

Musk’s AI startup, which he announced in July 2023, seeks to “understand the true nature of the universe,” according to its website. Last November, X.AI released a chatbot called Grok, which the company said was modeled after “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” The chatbot debuted with two months of training and had real-time knowledge of the internet, the company claimed at the time.

With Grok, X.AI aims to directly compete with companies including ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which Musk helped start before a conflict with co-founder Sam Altman led him to depart the project in 2018. It will also be vying with Google’s Bard technology and Anthropic’s Claude chatbot.

Now that Donald Trump is President-elect, Elon Musk is beginning to actively work with the new administration on its approach to AI and tech more broadly, as part of Trump’s inner circle in recent weeks.

Trump plans to repeal President Biden’s executive order on AI, according to his campaign platform, stating that it “hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology” and that “in its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”

Continue Reading

Environment

Baidu- and Geely-backed JiYue brand unveils ROBO X EV that goes 0-100 km/h in under 1.9 sec

Published

on

By

Baidu- and Geely-backed JiYue brand unveils ROBO X EV that goes 0-100 km/h in under 1.9 sec

JiYue, a Chinese EV brand focused on delivering all-electric “robocars” to the masses, has unveiled its latest model, and it’s quite a deviation from its previous EVs—but in the best way. Earlier today, JiYue launched the ROBO X supercar, designed for high-speed racing. By high speed, we mean 0-100 km/h acceleration in under 1.9 seconds. My mouth is watering.

JiYue has only existed since 2021, when parent tech company Baidu announced it was expanding from software development into physical EV production, joining forces with multinational automotive manufacturer Geely.

The new “robotic EV” marque initially launched as JIDU with $300 million in startup capital before garnering an additional $400 million in Series A funding, led by Baidu, in January 2022.

In August 2023, Geely took on a larger role in JIDU alongside a greater financial stake as the brand reimagined itself as JiYue, inheriting the JIDU logo and its flagship model, the 01 ROBOCAR.

In December 2023, Baidu and Geely unveiled a second model called the JiYue 07. It was born from JIDU’s ROBO-02 concept, which debuted in 2023 and was designed to compete against the Tesla Model 3 in China.

The 07 finally launched in China earlier this year with 545 miles of range. With an all-electric SUV and sedan on the market, JiYue has unveiled an exciting new entry in the form of a performance supercar called the ROBO X. Check it out:

JiYue’s new ROBO X EV is available for pre-order now

JiYue showcased its new ROBO X hypercar in front of the crowd at the 2024 Guangzhou Auto Show earlier today. Similar to previous models but with a unique spin, JiYue described the ROBO X as an AI smart-driving supercar that, for the first time, blends artificial intelligence and autonomous driving into a high-performance, race-ready EV.

When we say “high performance,” we mean a quad motor liquid-cooled drive system that can propel the ROBO X from 0 to 100 km/h (0 to 62 mph) in under 1.9 seconds. JiYue called the new ROBO X a “performance beast” with “the perfect balance of excellent aerodynamic performance and high downforce.” JiYue CEO Joe Xia was even bolder in his statements about the ROBO X:

For the next 20 years, the design of supercars will bear the shadow of Robo X. This is the best design in the history of Chinese automobiles today, and it is a landmark presence.

Fighter-style airflow ducts bolster the EV’s aerodynamics, efficiency, and overall posture. Per JiYue, the two-seater ROBO X is expected to deliver a maximum range of over 650 km (404 miles).

The new supercar features falcon-wing doors, a carbon fiber integrated frame, and a professional racing HALO safety system offering 360° of support. The interior features an AI smart cockpit with SIMO real-time feedback to give drivers an immersive racing experience.

Furthermore, JiYue said the vehicle will utilize parent company Baidu’s Apollo self-driving technology, which could make it the first electric supercar to apply pure-vision ADAS technology that enables track-level autonomous driving.

Following today’s unveiling of the ROBO X, JiYue has officially opened up pre-orders in China for RMB 49,999 ($6,915). That said, reservation holders will need to be patient as JiYue shared that it doesn’t expect to begin mass production of the ROBO X until 2027.

What do you think? Will people be talking about the ROBO X for the next 20 years?

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Trending