Company news in brief

Chinese slowdown fears hit Louis Vuitton shares Robust sales growth at luxury goods leader LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton LVMH in the third quarter failed on Wednesday to quell fears that Chinese demand for high-end fashion and handbags will start waning, sending its shares lower and rattling those of competitors.Markets are on edge over a simmering trade war between Beijing and Washington and its knock-on effect on Chinese consumers, whose appetite for branded goods fueled a luxury industry rebound over the past two years.Shares in LVMH closed down 7.1%, even though it reported a stronger-than-expected performance in the clothing and leather goods business that includes its biggest profit-driver, Louis Vuitton, and labels like Christian Dior.-Nampa/ReutersSnapchat announces new scripted shows- Snap Inc on Wednesday announced new scripted shows for its photo messaging app Snapchat which will launch this fall and struck partnerships with Hollywood production companies and writers in hopes of reversing its decline in users.Shares of Snap have fallen 52% since the beginning of the year as Snapchat has struggled to attract new users as rivals Facebook Inc and Instagram introduced Snapchat-like features on its own apps.The serialized shows will have new episodes daily, and include a documentary series called “Growing Up is a Drag,” about the coming-of-age of teenage drag stars, produced by Bunim/Murray, the production company behind the hit reality television show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”Snap said the episodes will be fast-paced for mobile viewing and as short as five minutes long, with each show having a profile page where viewers can easily find each episode.-Nampa/ReutersGoogle unveils new Pixel phoneAlphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday unveiled the third edition of its Pixel smartphone, a Google Home smart speaker with a display and its first tablet computer as it makes a come-from-behind push into hardware.The company’s Android software has gone from being an also-ran to the brains of most of the world’s smartphones and Google topped Amazon.com Inc in smart speaker sales in recent quarters.Pixel phones, though, have been a tougher sell, launching with glitches and garnering less than 1% of the global market by shipments in Google’s first two years of trying, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.The Pixel 3, priced at US$799, and a larger Pixel 3 XL, priced at US$899, mark Google’s latest entries for a phone lineup it hopes will someday be as popular as Apple Inc’s iPhone.The Pixel Slate tablet runs Google’s beefier Chrome OS laptop operating system rather than Android. It is priced at US$599, aimed at competing with Apple’s iPad Pro.-Nampa/ReutersTencent is no longer one of the world's 10 biggest companiesMore bad news for Tencent: the Chinese internet giant has lost its spot as one of the world’s 10 biggest companies.After shedding over US$200 billion in market value this year, more than any other company worldwide, Tencent has been replaced by Exxon Mobil in the top of the rankings based on market capitalisation.When its share price hit a record high in January, the Shenzhen-based company was in the top five along with Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon.com.Mitchell Green, Santa Barbara-based founding partner of Lead Edge Capital which manages US$1.5 billion of assets, said the selloff could continue as investors panic.Tencent’s market cap is now US$353 billion, while Exxon Mobil’s is US$365 billion.-Fin24Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting toolAmazon.com Inc’s machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like womenThe team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters.Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to five stars - much like shoppers rate products on Amazon, some of the people said.“Everyone wanted this holy grail,” one of the people said. “They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire those.”-Nampa/Reuters

Company news in brief

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Namibian Sun 2025-01-09

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Company news in brief

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Namibian Sun 2025-01-09

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