 |
|
|
|||||
Shares of U.K.’s Bytes Technology plunged over 27% on Wednesday after the IT firm said its operating profit for the first half of fiscal 2026 would be marginally lower due to delayed customer decisions and longer-than-expected readjustments from internal restructuring. Trading in the first few months of the year was hurt by macroeconomic pressures, leading to deferred customer decisions, particularly among corporates, the firm said in an update to the exchanges ahead of its annual general meeting. The stock fell as much as 27.43% to 369 pence, the lowest since April 2023, before paring some losses to trade down 23% at 391.4 pence by 08:00 GMT. Bytes, which provides software, cloud, and AI services, is moving from a generalist sales model to specialised, customer segment-focused teams a shift that has taken longer than expected, it said. Also weighing on its performance in the first half are changes to Microsoft’s enterprise agreement program, which the company had disclosed earlier, where certain transactional incentives have been reduced. The impact of the changes are weighted more to the first half due to high levels of renewals in March and April, Bytes said. The firm posted an operating profit of 35.6 million pounds ($48.8 million) for the first half of fiscal 2025. On Wednesday, it said it expects gross profit for the first half of fiscal 2026 to be flat. In May, it had said it was “well positioned” to deliver another year of double-digit gross profit growth and high single-digit operating profit growth in financial year 2025-26. “Investors will be slightly taken aback by the more cautious AGM statement, which now flags flat year over year trends versus May guidance for double-digit gross profit growth,” Jefferies analysts said in a note. ($1 = 0.7298 pounds) Judes Joseph, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
Flying comes with a lot of carbon emissions, but not all plane seats are environmentally equal. Seats that take up more space, like business or first class, come with a higher personal carbon footprint than the tightly packed seats in economy. Private jets, which have fewer than 20 seats total, are even more polluting per person. Now a coalition of eight countries has pledged to tax so-called premium fliers as a way to raise funds for climate action. The countries in the coalition are France, Kenya, Barbados, Spain, Somalia, Benin, Sierra Leone, and Antigua and Barbudaall members of the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a group launched at the COP28 climate conference in 2023. Municipalities have increasingly considered taxes on polluting activities, like private jet use or carbon emissions, as a way to make it less profitable to pollute, and to finance sustainable development initiatives. This initiative will also be supported by the European Commission. The tax on premium fliers will affect first- and business-class tickets as well as passengers on private jets, though its not yet clear how high the tax will be (a recent unrelated study on private jet use found that taxing private jet fuels at $1.95 per gallon could generate $3 billion annually for decarbonization efforts). A study for the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force found that broad aviation taxes, like on commercial jet fuels and for frequent fliers as well as private jets, combined could generate 187 billion euros (upwards of $220 billion) per year. Countries have tried to take other steps to curb aviation emissions, like by banning short flights. In 2021, France announced it would ban any flight that could be replaced by a 180-minute train ride. France also recently released plans to drastically cut marine shipping emissions. Only a small percentage of the world is responsible for aviation emissions. Overall, aviation accounts for 2.5% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions (its warming effect is stronger, however; aviation has contributed around 4% to global temperature rise since preindustrial times). But that comes from a limited group: Only around 10% of the worlds population flies most years. Just 1% of the worlds population is responsible for more than half of all aviation emissions, a group that has been dubbed super emitters. Flying is the most elite and polluting form of travel, so this is an important step towards ensuring that the binge users of this undertaxed sector are made to pay their fair share, Rebecca Newsom of Greenpeace International said in a statement about the coalitions pledge. With the cost of climate impacts surging in countries least responsible for the crisis, bold, cooperative action that makes polluters pay is not just fairits essential. But Newsom noted that the task force, and other rich countries, should go even further. The obvious next step is to hold oil and gas corporations to account, she said, by committing to higher taxes on fossil fuel profits and extraction by COP30.
Category:
E-Commerce
A U.S. judge has ruled that China’s Huawei Technologies, a leading telecoms equipment company, must face criminal charges in a wide reaching case alleging it stole technology and engaged in racketeering, wire and bank fraud and other crimes.U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly on Tuesday rejected Huawei’s request to dismiss the allegations in a 16-count federal indictment against the company, saying in a 52-page ruling that its arguments were premature.The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The U.S. accuses Huawei and some of its subsidiaries of plotting to steal U.S. trade secrets, installing surveillance equipment that enabled Iran to spy on protesters during 2009 anti-government demonstrations in Iran, and of doing business in North Korea despite U.S. sanctions there.During President Donald Trump’s first term in office, his administration raised national security concerns and began lobbying Western allies against including Huawei in their wireless, high-speed networks.In its January 2019 indictment, the Justice Department accused Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom to sell equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions and charged its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, with fraud by misleading the HSBC bank about the company’s business dealings in Iran.Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, was arrested in Canada in late 2018 on a U.S. extradition request but released in September 2021 in a high-stakes prisoner swap that freed two Canadians held by China and allowed her to return home.Chinese officials have accused the U.S. government of “economic bullying” and of improperly using national security as a pretext for “oppressing Chinese companies.” In their motion to dismiss the broad criminal case, among other arguments Huawei’s lawyers contended that the U.S. allegations were too vague and some were “impermissibly extraterritorial,” and do not involve domestic wire and bank fraud.The biggest maker of network gear, Huawei struggled to hold onto its market share under sanctions that have blocked its access to most U.S. processor chips and other technology. The limits led it to ramp up its own development of computer chips and other advanced technologies.The company also shifted its focus to the Chinese market and to network technology for hospitals, factories and other industrial customers and other products that would not be affected by U.S. sanctions. Elaine Kurtenbach, AP Business Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||