00:10 Speaker A
It’s time now for today’s trending tickers. Las Vegas Sands and Alibaba are in the spotlight.
00:17 Speaker A
What do these two stocks have in common? Well, they are both closely tied to the National Basket Association, which just announced a return to China for the first time since a tense parting of ways in 2019.
00:27 Speaker A
Now the NBA will play two pre-season games at Sands China’s Macau gambling resort, and it’s launching a multi-year AI and cloud partnership with Alibaba.
00:39 Speaker A
Sands is up in early trade but only very slightly, while Alibaba is down in Hong Kong and New York.
00:48 Speaker A
Now, there’s one Chinese bank stock you probably wish you’d owned this morning.
00:54 Speaker A
Hang Seng shares surged more than 25% after its longtime majority shareholder, HSBC, launched a $13 billion offer to privatize Hang Seng Bank Bank.
01:06 Speaker A
Now, on the other hand, HSBC shares, well they fell 6% as the deal would suspend share buybacks to conserve capital.
01:14 Speaker A
One more name in Asia, Fast Retailing, the owner of Unilo.
01:20 Speaker A
Shares climbed over 3% on Thursday after the company reported strong full-year results. Fast Retailing reported full-year operating profit growth of 12.6% year-on-year.
01:31 Speaker A
The company said these results mark the fourth consecutive record annual performance and that its new stores had been, quote, hugely successful.
01:41 Speaker A
Jefferies is also trending after a steep drop in Wednesday session of nearly 8%, but it’s now recovering. It was up at one point in pre-market by nearly 5%, now just over 1% higher.
01:54 Speaker A
And it which followed the disclosure that one of Jeffries’s credit funds had more than $700 million exposure linked to the bankrupt auto parts company, First Brands.
02:05 Speaker A
Now finally, probably the biggest stock move this morning, Ferrari. The Italian luxury car stock is deep in the red, both in New York and in Milan after the company revealed new details of its first fully electric model set to debut next year.
02:20 Speaker A
It’s the biggest decline for Ferrari since 2016.
02:23 Speaker A
The thing is, demand for luxury EVs is cooling. Even high-end brands like Porsche and Mercedes have reported softer sales and scaling back production targets.
02:34 Speaker A
So Ferrari is now stressing that these very powerful electric vehicles will represent only a small share of total output in the near term, and they’ll focus on hybrid and limited editions instead.