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Tesla up 20% after Panasonic posts first quarterly profit at battery business

The Japan Times

TOKYO/SAN, FRANCISCO – Tesla Inc.'s stock surged 20 percent on Monday in its largest one-day gain since 2013, fueled by a quarterly profit at Panasonic's battery business with the U.S. carmaker and an investor report predicting its shares would rise more than ten-fold by 2024. Shares of Tesla have rallied by over 30 percent since the car maker run by Chief Executive Elon Musk posted its second consecutive quarterly profit last Wednesday, which was viewed as a milestone for the company competing against established heavyweights including General Motors Co. and BMW. The stock is up over 300 percent since early June, helped by Tesla's better-than-expected financial results and ramped up production at its new car factory in Shanghai. Monday's rise came after Panasonic Corp. reported the first quarterly profit in its U.S. battery business with Tesla, which followed years of production troubles and delays. "We are catching up as Tesla is quickly expanding production," Panasonic Chief Financial Officer Hirokazu Umeda told an earnings briefing, referring to battery cell production. "Higher production volume is helping to push down materials costs and erase losses."


IBM's big bet on cloud computing, AI and open source needs to pay off soon ZDNet

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And so, after eight years spent leading one of the world's oldest and most famous technology businesses, IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty will step down in April. Stepping up to the CEO role is Arvind Krishna, who currently serves as the senior VP for the company's cloud and cognitive software unit. When the news came out on Thursday, IBM's shares jumped as much as 5%. Fingers can easily be pointed at Rometty's mixed legacy: during her tenure, the company's stock price dropped over 25% and while the company has been keen to trumpet its artificial intelligence work (in the form of IBM Watson) and its reinvention as a cloud company (thanks to Red Hat) there is still plenty of work to do if IBM is to every approach its former glories. Sure, the latest earnings published by IBM earlier this month beat Q4 expectations.


The best digital marketing stats we've seen this week – Econsultancy

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We've reached the end of January – hooray! To celebrate, there's a myriad of stats to get your teeth into in this week's roundup, including data on customer recommendations, digital out-of-home (DOOH) and financial results for some big companies. Before we get started, subscribers can take a look at our Digital Statistics Index for more? A survey conducted by Vitreous World and Phrasee has found that 68% of global marketers feel they don't understand what AI is and think it's simply an overused buzzword. Additionally, a worrying 67% of those surveyed say they don't know how to implement AI to effectively deliver results. This shows a large gap in knowledge when it comes to one of the biggest trends shaping the world of marketing today and the near future – and it is thought to be costing companies millions in revenue.


Don't expect a $550 million settlement to stop Facebook from scanning your face

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Facebook has agreed to pay a $550 million settlement over its use of facial recognition technology nearly a decade ago. This comes just days after a relatively unknown startup selling facial recognition systems to police departments caught the attention of Congress. It seems, after years of civil liberties advocates worrying, facial recognition technology is more powerful and more prevalent than ever. Neither a mammoth new settlement nor the piecemeal legislation nationwide seem suited to stop the takeover. As it announced in the company's quarterly earnings report on Wednesday, Facebook will shell out half a billion dollars to settle a 2015 class action lawsuit over its facial recognition software that suggested tags for people it identified in users' photos.


Nintendo shares drop most since April after profit misses estimates

The Japan Times

Nintendo Co. fell the most in nine months after it missed estimates for quarterly profit and forecast full-year earnings that were short of expectations, raising concern about demand for its Switch game console. The shares fell as much as 4.7 percent in early trading in Tokyo on Friday, the biggest intraday drop since April 26. A day earlier, Nintendo reported operating income of ¥168.7 billion ($1.5 billion) in the three months ended December, but that underwhelmed versus the ¥175.4 billion average projection. The lackluster results may fuel worries about the Switch console's longevity, especially in a year when Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp. are preparing to launch new machines for the holidays. Nintendo released a lower-cost Switch Lite in the fall, reaching out to more mainstream users, and that console has sold 5.19 million units to date, the company reported.


NetBase and Quid to Merge

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NetBase, the industry leader in social media analytics, announced it will merge with Quid, a leader in AI driven text analytics. The combined company is the next generation consumer and market intelligence platform. The platform will deliver contextual insights that reveal business trends from across all forms of structured and unstructured data. The two companies will join forces under their new collective name, NetBase Quid. In today's age of information overload, NetBase Quid will deliver businesses an unprecedented solution that is faster, more accurate and actionable and with access to billions of indexed resources -- from social media posts, consumer reviews, product reviews, news articles to business filings, to patent applications, and forums – which can be aggregated, analyzed, and visualized in order to discover consumer and market insights.


Duke University Health System Joins LeanTaaS to Deliver Keynote

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Improving operating room capacity management through data analytics and machine learning will be the breakfast keynote topic of discussion at the upcoming 2020 OR Business Management Conference. Ashley Walsh, senior director of client services at LeanTaaS, Inc., a Silicon Valley software innovator that increases patient access and transforms operational performance for healthcare providers, and Melissa Pressley, management engineer at Duke University Health System (DUHS), will address the audience on Thursday, Jan. 30, at 7:30 a.m. in the Global Ballroom of the Bonaventure Resort & Spa in Weston, Florida. "Improving OR utilization and improving surgeon access to OR time significantly enhances the financial results for hospitals and health systems, increases patient access, and facilitates surgeon recruitment and retention" "DUHS has leveraged EHR data to improve OR access with mobile and web technologies and increase accountability with surgeon-centric metrics and reporting to help our surgeons better understand the "why" behind OR metrics," said Pressley. "I'm looking forward to sharing how DUHS and LeanTaaS have enhanced the patient experience while balancing surgeon needs, among other improvements." DUHS is among several leading health systems in the U.S. that have deployed the LeanTaaS iQueue for Operating Rooms solution to effect data-driven changes to their approach to capacity management.


Why European retailers are betting on AI

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For today's retailers, AI is fast becoming an invaluable tool to understand what shoppers want – and ensure their experience matches up with their expectations. From supermarket chains with thousands of retail outlets to online clothes brands, fast-evolving AI technologies are helping them to increase sales, reduce excess stock and overall, improve profit margins. "Retailers are under increasing pressure," says Kate Edwards, Senior Research Analyst at JLL. "AI is a growing part of their business model to use the data they have to better understand their customers, predict future trends and boost business, from improving the customer-facing experience, to optimising supply chain processes." The growing focus on sustainability is equally driving uptake. For example, AI can help identify the opportunities for unsold products, reduce the levels of returned products and decipher optimal fulfilment options, delivering both cost and environmental benefits.


IBM Calls For Rules to Curb Bias in Artificial Intelligence

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IBM called for rules aimed at eliminating bias in artificial intelligence to ease concerns that the technology relies on data that bakes in past discriminatory practices and could harm women, minorities, the disabled, older Americans and others. As it seeks to define a growing debate in the U.S. and Europe over how to regulate the burgeoning industry, IBM urged industry and governments to jointly develop standards to measure and combat potential discrimination. The Armonk, New York-based company issued policy proposals Tuesday ahead of a Wednesday panel on AI to be led by Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The initiative is designed to find a consensus on rules that may be stricter than what industry alone might produce, but that are less stringent than what governments might impose on their own. "It seems pretty clear to us that government regulation of artificial intelligence is the next frontier in tech policy regulation," said Chris Padilla, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at International Business Machines Corp. The 108-year-old company, once a world technology leader, has lagged behind the sector for years.


IBM Proposes Artificial Intelligence Rules to Ease Bias Concerns

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Sign up here to receive the Davos Diary, a special daily newsletter that will run from Jan. 20-24. IBM called for rules aimed at eliminating bias in artificial intelligence to ease concerns that the technology relies on data that bakes in past discriminatory practices and could harm women, minorities, the disabled, older Americans and others. As it seeks to define a growing debate in the U.S. and Europe over how to regulate the burgeoning industry, IBM urged industry and governments to jointly develop standards to measure and combat potential discrimination. The Armonk, New York-based company issued policy proposals Tuesday ahead of a Wednesday panel on AI to be led by Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The initiative is designed to find a consensus on rules that may be stricter than what industry alone might produce, but that are less stringent than what governments might impose on their own. "It seems pretty clear to us that government regulation of artificial intelligence is the next frontier in tech policy regulation," said Chris Padilla, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at International Business Machines Corp.