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Opko Health's Q4 Service Revenues More Than Double Due To COVID-19 Testing Services

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  • Jack Ma’s Fortune Jumps $2 Billion After Record Alibaba Fine

    (Bloomberg) -- China just slapped a record antitrust fine on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The company thanked the government and investors breathed a sigh of relief.Alibaba’s American depositary receipts climbed 9.3% on Monday in New York, their biggest jump in almost four years. For Jack Ma, the founder of the e-commerce giant, it meant his fortune increased by $2.3 billion to $52.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.The $2.8 billion fine is less severe than some investors feared and is based on only 4% of the company’s 2019 domestic sales, far less than the maximum 10% allowed under Chinese law. While the internet giant will have to adjust the way it does business, its vice chairman said regulators won’t impose a radical overhaul of its e-commerce strategy and its chief executive officer declared Alibaba ready to move on.“Alibaba would not have achieved our growth without sound government regulation and service, and the critical oversight, tolerance and support from all of our constituencies have been crucial to our development,” the company said in an open letter. “For this, we are full of gratitude and respect.”Ma, who up until last year was China’s richest person, has lost billions since his nation’s regulators began an anti-monopolistic campaign, halting the initial public offering of his Ant Group Co. payments company just two days before it was scheduled to go public. He is now China’s third-richest person after Zhong Shanshan of bottled-water company Nongfu Spring Co. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Pony Ma.Separately, China’s central bank ordered Ant to become a financial-holding company that will be regulated more like a bank. The move, announced on Monday, will have far-reaching implications for the firm’s growth and its ability to press ahead with an initial public offering. Alibaba shares opened 3.4% higher in Hong Kong on Tuesday.(Updates to include Ant overhaul and stock move in last paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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And all at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has been stoking unemployment.“We remain cautious of near-to-mid term growth across the consumers space as market size shrinks on potential expat depopulation,” said Mehwish Zafar, a senior equity analyst at Arqaam Capital in Dubai who has a “hold” recommendation on the shares. Like-for-like sales growth will probably be negative until at least 2022, he said, with growth only coming from new store openings or acquisitions.Shares in BinDawood jumped more than 30% in the days immediately after the sale. They have since slipped back, showing as of Monday a gain of about 11.5% from the listing price.It’s a performance that has helped buttress the family’s bid to diversify into other assets while strengthening the core business, a goal identified by Ahmad BinDawood as key to avoiding the kind of strife his father feared might undermine the business as it passed to a new generation.“The majority of family businesses don’t survive the transition to the third generation, and that’s something that concerned my father a lot,” BinDawood said.Pilgrims ProgressThe rise of the BinDawood business has been some 40 years in the making. Once a small-time vendor of Arabian perfumes and groceries to pilgrims visiting the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina, it is now a nationwide concern spanning supermarkets and hypermarkets, hotels and distribution centers. The grocery business alone employs more than 10,000 people across 74 stores.Ahmad BinDawood’s own destiny was sealed as soon as his father, Abdulrazzag BinDawood graduated in the 1980’s from the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran. Instead of following his peers into the oil industry, he decided to join his brothers Ismail and Abdullah in their burgeoning retail trade.Which is why Ahmad found himself on the front line at such a young age. At just eight, he was helping to sell items to the pilgrims during his school holidays, envious of friends who were away avoiding Saudi Arabia’s scorching summers.“Our friends were traveling and off enjoying themselves and sometimes we would would ask: why not us?” BinDawood said. “But that experience built the passion in us to stay in the business that our father and our uncles built.”A decision to push into online shopping and delivery helped prepare the firm for lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, but couldn’t outweigh the hit from the absence of religious tourists who were prevented from entering the kingdom for much of the year. While profit climbed almost 7% last year, it had slumped more than 53% in the fourth quarter as Saudi Arabia reimposed travel restrictions.BinDawood is still optimistic that shoppers will return as travel resumes, though how quickly pilgrims come back to Saudi Arabia in anything like their previous numbers remains uncertain.Next up may be the purchase of a rival grocery chain to expand into neighboring countries, BinDawood said. At the same time, the IPO proceeds will help further develop the BinDawood Group family office, which Ahmad’s father is now running. 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    (Bloomberg) -- GameStop Corp. fell on Monday, wrapping up its longest losing streak in a year, amid growing skepticism over its long-term potential despite activist Ryan Cohen’s latest efforts to revitalize the company.Shares fell 11% in New York to close at $141.09, their lowest level in more than two weeks, as Reuters reported the video-game retailer is seeking a replacement for the current Chief Executive Officer George Sherman, without naming sources.GameStop didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the Reuters report.News of the potential change at the company’s helm followed a warning by Ascendiant Capital Markets analyst Edward Woo, who downgraded the retailer to sell from hold, raising questions about the company’s long-term prospect as it faces growing competition from the likes of Microsoft Corp. and Sony Group Corp.GameStop’s Reddit-trading surge is likely to fade and shares will tumble in the long run “to match its current weak results and outlook,” he wrote.GameStop shares surged about 650% this year, pushing its market value to nearly $10 billion thanks in part to optimism over a Cohen-led overhaul. The activist investor has brought on a number of new executives and board members over the past few months as part of his turnaround.Still, trading in GameStop, as with most stocks favored by traders using social platforms like Reddit, has fizzled recently as investors turn their focus elsewhere. The company’s announcement earlier this month that it plans to offer as much as $1 billion in additional shares added to the selling pressure.Read more: Meme Stock Mania Fizzles, Wall Street Sees ‘Big Reckoning’GameStop has suffered with the video-game industry’s shift to online distribution. With gamers downloading more and more there’s less reason to make a trip to a physical store, analysts said. The company reported disappointing fourth-quarter earnings last month.The stock now has five sell-equivalent ratings, compared to two hold ratings and zero buys, data compiled by Bloomberg show. An average price target of $46.50 implies shares will lose two-thirds of their value in the coming year.(Close prices, updates with details throughout)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Walmart Plans Massive India Warehouse With Billionaire Adani

    (Bloomberg) -- Walmart Inc.’s e-commerce unit, Flipkart Online Services Pvt., signed a pact with tycoon Gautam Adani’s conglomerate to build one of the largest retail warehouses in India as the U.S. giant gears up to battle Amazon.com Inc. and homegrown rivals in the South Asian nation.The partnership marks the entry of Adani, India’s fastest-rising billionaire, into the three-way fight for domination of India’s online shopping space. Up against the Walmart-Adani alliance is not just Amazon, but also Reliance Industries Ltd., the conglomerate owned by Mukesh Ambani, India and Asia’s richest man.They all want a slice of a market estimated to generate $200 billion in sales by 2026 -- turbocharged by pandemic restrictions that are keeping people away from brick-and-mortar stores.Adani Logistics Ltd., a unit of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Ltd., will build a 534,000-square-feet fulfillment center in its upcoming logistics hub at Mumbai and lease it to Flipkart, the companies said in a joint statement Monday. Expected to be operational in the third quarter of 2022, this warehouse -- roughly the size of 11 football fields -- can store 10 million units of inventory, the firms said.Bengaluru-based Flipkart will also develop its third data center at the AdaniConnecX facility in Chennai to help the e-commerce company keep its data within India, according to the statement. Adaniconnex Private Ltd. is a joint venture between U.S.’s EdgeConneX Inc. and Adani Enterprises Limited., the conglomerate’s flagship listed unit.Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.More CompetitiveAmazon has already invested heavily in fulfillment centers in India, and its data-centric approach enables it to offer next-day delivery for select products in large cities, according to Utkarsh Sinha, managing director at Mumbai-based consultancy Bexley Advisors. “It will be critical to see if Walmart’s plans follow a similar tech-first infrastructure approach, which could make Flipkart’s delivery and fulfillment more competitive.”The new fulfillment center being planned is likely to be larger in area than the ones operated by Amazon in India so far, underscoring the potential size of the Indian market.“We see this as a great opportunity to serve Flipkart’s physical as well as digital infrastructure needs,” said Karan Adani, chief executive officer of Adani Ports.The partnership is another sign of Adani’s rising clout: his coal mining-to-data centers conglomerate has rapidly expanded and diversified across sectors, adding $24 billion to his net worth this year. Riding a massive rally in his companies’ shares, Adani’s wealth has jumped to almost $58 billion -- the fastest rise in wealth globally.(Updates with analyst comments in the seventh paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Singapore Dealer Prepares Vault for 15,000 Tons of Silver

    (Bloomberg) -- Inside a six-story high warehouse near Singapore’s Changi airport, a vast hangar-like space is waiting to be filled with a precious metal that usually plays second fiddle to its more lustrous sibling.The vault that’s being built by Silver Bullion Pte Ltd. will -- when completed in the first half of next year --- be able to store 15,000 tons of silver. It’s only holding around 400 tons of the metal at the moment, but the vacant space is an indication that silver appears to be on the cusp of a promising few years.Demand for coins and bars is booming, fueled in part by a Reddit-induced buying frenzy in February that drove prices to an eight-year high. While the fervor has abated, retail interest is still elevated, valuations are relatively cheap and measures are being taken to meet the surge in demand. The amount of silver stored in vaults in London rose 11% in March to a record, according to the London Bullion Market Association.As well as the Singapore vault, JM Bullion, one of the biggest precious metals retailers in the U.S., plans to open a 25,000-square-foot-warehouse in Dallas in June that will be used for storing silver and other precious metals.The metal’s crucial role in the energy transition -- it’s a key component in solar panels -- also looks set to buoy consumption over the longer-term. All this has some analysts forecasting that silver will outperform gold this year.“The outlook for demand growth for silver over the next few years looks very positive, especially across a wide range of industrial applications, including solar, 5G and automotive,” said Philip Klapwijk, managing director of Hong Kong-based consultant Precious Metals Insights Ltd. “That, coupled with ongoing high levels of investment is likely to create the need for more dedicated storage space for silver in bullion and also intermediate forms.”Gregor Gregersen, founder of Silver Bullion, said he started searching for a bigger warehouse two or three years ago and that decision was vindicated last year when demand for the metal surged during the coronavirus pandemic. “The idea is to make this into a really iconic building,” he said during a tour of the vault that will be known as The Reserve. “There isn’t really a facility built specifically to store large quantities of silver securely.”Singapore has a reputation as a stable financial center and has taken steps to position itself as a bullion hub, exempting investment-grade gold, silver and platinum from a goods and services tax.Physical investment in silver, which covers bullion coin and bar purchases, is expected to reach a six-year high of 257 million ounces in 2021, according to the Silver Institute.Spot silver, currently trading around $25 an ounce, is forecast by Citigroup Inc. to peak at $28 to $30 in the second half, aided by “still solid” investment demand and an end to physical de-stocking in China and India. The lender sees the price averaging $27.30 this year. Morgan Stanley, meanwhile sees the metal averaging $25 an ounce in 2021, up 22% from last year.Gold, meanwhile, is stabilizing after its first quarterly loss since 2018 amid high bond yields and optimism over the global economic recovery from the pandemic that’s damping demand for the metal. Citi sees gold, currently fetching around $1,740 an ounce, falling to $1,575 in six to 12 months.Sill, there’s no shortage of silver. The Silver Institute expects the global market to remain in a surplus this year, although it sees the lowest excess since 2015. And even against a backdrop of strong electronics and automotive demand as well as growing solar power investment, silver’s failure to break higher suggests the gold price, real yields and the U.S. dollar remain powerful drags, Morgan Stanley said in a note.“Considering the high correlation of silver to gold, and our bearish outlook for the yellow metal over the next 12 months, we expect silver together with gold to continue to struggle amid higher real interest-rate expectations in the U.S.,” said Giovanni Staunovo, a strategist at UBS Group AG.JM Bullion Chief Executive Officer Michael Wittmeyer is more optimistic. The Reddit-fueled buying frenzy caused a spike in demand from existing silver bugs as well as bringing in a lot of first-time investors in the metal, he said. “We’re just trying to expand our capacity so that next time this happens, we’ll be able to get all these orders shipped more quickly.”The accelerating move away from fossil fuels should also provide an enduring tailwind for silver demand as investment in solar power ramps up. China, Japan and South Korea all set carbon zero targets last year, while the U.S. is considering emissions cuts of 50% or more from 2005 levels by 2030.The energy transition demand should give prices an extra boost, said CPM Group analyst Rohit Savant. Silver will average $27 this year and beat gold due to its relatively cheaper valuation and strong investment demand, he said. Spot silver fell 2% to $24.77 an ounce at 10:40 a.m. in New York on Monday after gaining 1% last week.In Singapore, Silver Bullion’s Gregersen is confident all that currently vacant space in his vault won’t go to waste. “Silver is usually a forgotten metal that people don’t really care much about,” he said. “But it’s starting to shine a bit more and that trend will continue.”(Updates with spot silver price in the 16th paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.