Macron says France showed heart and unity, despite heartbreaking loss
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2022
French President Emmanuel Macron comforted Didier Deschamps’ squad at the locker room of Lusail stadium, after they lost to Argentina in a penalty shootout on Sunday , dashing hopes of a second World Cup in a row.
He said he shared in the sadness of French people, and that they should “remain proud of this team”.
“We have the capacity to make the craziest comeback, to make the unthinkable happen, to be united, to have genius talents,” Macron told journalists.
Les Bleus, bidding to become the first team to retain the title since Brazil in 1962, went through the opening hour like ghosts and fell 2-0 behind after Lionel Messi’s penalty and Angel Di Maria’s goal, before the unthinkable happened.
After Deschamps had made several changes, taking off Olivier Giroud, Ousmane Dembele, Antoine Griezmann and Theo Hernandez, France burst into life as Kylian Mbappe scored a penalty and a stunning volley within 97 seconds to level the scores.
“What this match also tells us is that – nothing is pre-destined. Anything is always possible,” Macron said.
Messi struck again in extra time, but so did Mbappe with another penalty to make it 3-3, only for Randal Kolo Muani to be denied by Emiliano Martinez in the dying seconds before France lost the shootout 4-2, becoming the first team to taste defeat in a World Cup final after scoring three goals.
The coin could have flipped the other way, especially thanks to Mbappe’s magnificent performance as he became the second player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final.
Macron was filmed comforting a dejected Mbappe on the pitch, after the final whistle.
“What do you want me to tell you? He’s the best goal scorer in this tournament, he’s an extraordinary player, and he already won the World Cup, a final. Voila. He’s only 24 years old,” Macron said.
Argentina’s President, Alberto Fernandez, and other Latin American leaders and public figures praised the South American three times world champion for the nail-biting final match against France in Qatar.
Fernandez thanked the national squad for the victory along with Argentina’s vice-president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who reminded the soccer star Lionel Messi jibe to the Dutch “what are you looking at, fool?” won Argentinian’s hearts.
Other Latin American leaders drew on Twitter to congratulate Argentina.
Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro wrote the country’s victory was late soccer legend Diego Maradona’s dream as Chile’s Gabriel Boric said the joy crossed the Andean mountain range.
Brazilian soccer star Pele also lauded the blue-and-white squad in an Instagram Post saying it was a “gift” to watch Argentina play France.
‘It is a party!’ Across Argentina, fans celebrate World Cup win
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2022
THE NATION
Argentines took over the streets in different towns across the country to celebrate their team’s victory in the 2022 FIFA World Cup on Sunday (December 18).
In Buenos Aires, drone footage showed thousands of Argentines at the city’s iconic obelisk. Fans also gathered outside the former home of late soccer great Diego Armando Maradona’s home.
Mar del Plata – hometown of Argentina’s goalkeeper Damian Emiliano ‘Dibu’ Martinez – also saw waves of fans dressed in blue and white shirts.
A resident of Mar del Plata Pablo Vit told Reuters it was a party where no social classes exist.
In a tense and roller-coaster match played in Qatar in front of some 88,000 fans, Argentina, led by star Lionel Messi, took home its third World Cup after beating France, the defending champions, 4-2 in penalties after drawing 3-3 after extra time.
The South American team, which lost the final of the tournament against Germany in 2014, had not won a World Cup since 1986. But the rise of the team has spurred avid support in Argentina, which is plagued by high inflation and an economic crisis that has pushed some 40% of the population into poverty.
An Argentina fan holds a replica World Cup trophy as they celebrate winning the World Cup
Argentina fans celebrate winning the World Cup
General view as Argentina fans celebrate with flares after winning the World CupArgentina fans celebrate winning the World Cup at the Obelisk with an image of Lionel MessiArgentina fans celebrate winning the World Cup at the Obelisk with an image of Lionel Messi and fireworks
Messi wins World Cup, Argentina beats France on penalties
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2022
THE NATION
Lionel Messi’s once-in-a-generation career is complete. The Argentina superstar is finally a World Cup champion.
Messi scored two goals and then another in a shootout as Argentina beat France 4-2 on penalties after a 3-3 draw Sunday to claim a third World Cup title despite Kylian Mbappé scoring the first hat trick in a final in 56 years.
Now there’s no debate. Messi is definitively in the pantheon of soccer’s greatest ever players, alongside Pelé — a record three-time World Cup champion from Brazil — and Diego Maradona, the late Argentina great with whom Messi was so often compared.
Messi achieved what Maradona did in 1986 and dominated a World Cup for Argentina. The torch will one day pass to Mbappé, whose late goals lit up one of the most dramatic finals in the tournament’s 92-year history and emulated Geoff Hurst’s hat trick for England in 1966, but not just yet.
“Let’s go, Argentina!” Messi roared into a microphone on the field in the post-match celebrations after playing in a record 26th World Cup match.
Messi was in scintillating form from the start, putting Argentina ahead from the penalty spot and playing a part in Angel Di Maria’s goal that made it 2-0 after 36 minutes.
Argentina
Mbappé, on the other hand, was anonymous until scoring two goals in a 97-second span — one a penalty, the other a volley from just inside the area — to take the game to extra time.
Messi tapped in his second goal in the 108th minute, leaving Argentina on the brink of the title once again, but there was still time for another penalty from Mbappé to take the thrilling game to a shootout. Argentina
Gonzalo Montiel scored the clinching penalty kick after Kingsley Coman had an attempt saved by Argentina goalkeeper Emi Martinez and Aurelien Tchouameni missed for France.
“This is my dream,” Martinez said.
Europe’s run of four straight World Cup winners came to an end. The last South American champion was Brazil, and that was also in Asia — when Japan and South Korea hosted the tournament in 2002.
Argentina won its previous World Cup titles in 1978 and 1986. In Qatar, the country backed up its victory from last year’s Copa America, its first major trophy since 1993.
It’s quite the climax to Messi’s international career, which might not yet be over at the age of 35 because he is playing as well as ever. After all, he finished the World Cup with seven goals, one behind Mbappé’s tournament leading eight.
It was quite the finale, too, for a unique World Cup — the first to be played in the Middle East and the Arab world.
For FIFA and the Qatari organizers, a final between two major soccer nations and the world’s two best players represented a perfect way to cap a tournament laced in controversy ever since the scandal-shrouded vote in 2010 to give the event to a tiny Arab emirate.
The years-long scrutiny since has focused on the switch of dates from the traditional June-July period to November-December, strong criticism of how migrant workers have been treated, and then unease about taking soccer’s biggest event to a nation where homosexual acts are illegal.
On Sunday, there was one narrative at play for most people: Could Messi do it?
He could, despite the 23-year-old Mbappé — Messi’s teammate at Paris Saint-Germain — doing all he could to emulate Pelé by winning his first two World Cups.
Messi became the first player to score in the group stage and each of the knockout rounds at a single World Cup.
Ever since Argentina’s unthinkable 2-1 loss to Saudi Arabia in their opening group game, Messi has been a man on a mission — embracing the responsibility of leading his national team at his final World Cup and playing in the spirit of Maradona by coupling his dazzling skills with rarely seen aggression.
Maradona never scored in a final, though. Messi has, allowing him to erase memories of his only other World Cup final — in 2014 when Argentina lost to Germany 1-0 and Messi squandered a great chance in the second half.
On that night at the Maracanã Stadium, Messi stared down at the golden World Cup trophy that escaped him.
Eight years later, he will raise it aloft in the biggest moment of a career like no other.
No coach has ever won the World Cup twice in the post-World War II era but France’s Didier Deschamps is one victory away from entering the record books when they take on Argentina in the final on Sunday in Qatar.
But ask the Frenchman about his chance at rewriting history when he can become the first to win the World Cup twice as a coach and once as a player, he steps away from the spotlight, happily allowing his beloved squad to be the focus instead.
Deschamps is the fourth manager to lead a country to back-to-back World Cup finals after Vittorio Pozzo (Italy), Carlos Bilardo (Argentina) and Franz Beckenbauer (West Germany), with the latter two losing one final each.
But his lasting legacy will be uniting a France squad that, in the past, had been fractured by in-fighting and impertinence before building a squad that knew how to go deep in tournaments.
Having captained France’s ‘golden generation’ that won the 1998 World Cup and the 2000 European Championship, the 54-year-old has now nurtured another golden generation over the past decade.
As a coach, Deschamps guided France to the European Championship final on home soil in 2016 where they narrowly lost to Portugal in extra time, the 2018 World Cup final where they thrashed Croatia and now the showpiece match in Qatar.
What also set Deschamps apart is his trust in youth despite the truckload of talent available to him.
Kylian Mbappe is the face and star of the team but Deschamps’ trust in youth came to the forefront when he started the relatively inexperienced midfield duo of Youssouf Fofana and Aurelien Tchouameni — who had 25 caps between them — for the semi-final.
What has made Deschamps successful in tournaments, especially at the World Cup since 2018, is not sticking to a particular identity or philosophy which is often the defining feature of big teams.
Instead, he has adapted to circumstances and opponents. There have been games where France have dominated possession while in others they have been happy to cede the ball and hit teams on the counter-attack.
The second tactic worked wonders in the semi-final against underdogs Morocco, who had reached the last four playing with very little possession but struggled to make good use of the ball as France sat back.
Messi saves his best for last in Qatar as Argentina eye World Cup glory
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2022
Reuters
As if he had not made enough fairy-tales, Argentina’s little genius Lionel Messi has saved the potentially most magical script for his last World Cup – with one line left to write.
With immense pressure on him to match the late great Diego Maradona and send the trophy back to Buenos Aires, Messi has lit up the Qatar tournament while others in the superstar stratum – Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo – have underwhelmed and gone home.
From Argentina’s opening game until their semi-final win over Croatia, Messi, near the end of his career and at his fifth World Cup aged 35, has been the tournament’s out-and-out star.
His match statistics speak for themselves: six starts, five goals, three assists en route to Sunday’s final against France.
Smashing so many records it is hard to keep track, Messi has beaten Maradona’s tally of World Cup goals and appearances for Argentina, and on Sunday will jump ahead of Lothar Matthaeus’ joint record 25-match appearances at the tournament.
Beyond the dazzling data, however, it has been Messi’s mesmerizing motion, and joyous celebrations, that have electrified football fans around the world.
Spending large passages of play at walking pace and barely bothering to defend at times, Messi has waited for his moments, employing with deadly effect his low centre-of-gravity, stunning change of pace and shimmying runs with ball glued to feet.
He is “a sprite floating on the periphery of the game until the moment is right,” wrote British sports writer Jonathan Wilson. “You can mark a man; much harder to mark a ghost.”
After a shock opening upset by Saudi Arabia, it was Messi who rallied the team: five wins followed.
His best goal was a sumptuous low strike from outside the box against Mexico.
And pundits are still shaking their heads over his pinpoint pass to Nahuel Molina for Argentina’s first goal against the Netherlands in the quarter-final. What made it remarkable, and a candidate for one of the all-time great assists, is that Messi did not look up yet found Molina with preposterous perfection.
It was in that game where Messi cemented his Qatari love affair with Argentine fans, who in the past have sometimes compared him harshly against Maradona’s extrovert personality, passion for his country, and 1986 World Cup triumph.
After scoring a penalty to send Argentine fans into delirium, the usually impeccably-behaved Messi ran towards the Dutch bench cupping his ears in a provocative gesture.
Then after the game, he confronted a Dutch striker with a jibe caught on camera: “What are you looking at, fool?”
Though some pundits criticised him for disrespect, Argentine fans were largely delighted at the Maradona-like flashes of defiance from the introverted Messi.
Some have had tattoos of the phrase.
Despite such adulation, everyone knows that true immortal parity with Maradona – at least in the biggest sporting tournament on earth – does still hinge on beating the French.
Many non-Argentines have long had Argentina as their second team, hoping Messi will win the World Cup if their own nation cannot to complete what would be a beautiful story.
Messi left Argentina at 13 to join Barcelona’s youth setup.
Despite worries that he was too small, the new boy shone in the junior ranks before coach Frank Rijkaard gave him a senior debut at the age of 16 in a friendly against Porto in 2003.
Messi went on to become Barcelona’s all-time top scorer and appearance maker with 672 goals in 778 games.
In one season, 2011-12, he smashed La Liga’s scoring record with 50 goals. In total, he won 35 trophies with Barcelona, including 10 La Liga titles and four Champions League trophies, before moving to Paris St Germain last year.
Along the way, he won the Ballon d’Or a record seven times and FIFA Player of the Year six.
For Argentina, he is the all-time top scorer and led his nation to Copa America glory last year after a 28-year trophy drought including a string of heartbreaking finals defeats.
All that is missing in the Messi story is a World Cup.
But even should the unthinkable happen and Argentina lose, it seems he has won over a nation that now knows Messi loved the shirt every bit as much as Maradona, brought them wondrous moments over the years, and simply could not have tried harder or come closer to lifting the World Cup.
Wannagorn, Suritpreeya Reign Supreme Despite Strong Winds to Win C Classes in Junior Asian Tour Qualifiers
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2022
THE NATION
Wannagorn Bennukul and Suritpreeya Pruksanubal defied the windy conditions to win the C Boys and Girls trophies in the Junior Asian Tour 2023 Qualifying School at Lake View Resort & Golf Club in Cha-Am on Sunday.
Wannagorn shot a final round 68 and a total one under-par-143 to beat Takrit Supagonchoowong by six stroke for the boys’ title while Suritpreeya carded a 76 for a total three over-par-147 to dominate the girls’ crown with Kulsiri Kaewwijit coming in second, nine strokes back.
“I played so well and hit the ball exactly as I desired. It’s quite a challenge and fun to play under this windy condition. I’ve learned a lot playing here as this is my first time playing at this course,” said Wannagorn who secured a slot into the inaugural Junior Asian Tour next year.
“I haven’t set any long-term play yet. I just want to improve my approaching game first,” Wannagorn responded when asked about his future goal.
Suritpreeya will also join Wannagorn in the continental junior tour which begins in January 2023. She, however, hopes to fix her game before the new season.
“Although I’m happy with my win, judging from the score, I need to work a lot harder especially on how to play under strong winds. I’d never played under this circumstance before, so it was hard to control my shots,” she said.
In the A Girls second round, Alisa Inpraset still clung to the lead after hitting a 73 and a two-day total of four under-par-140. Struggling with her game under the windy condition, the Nakhon Ratchasima-born, after two opening birdies, suffered three straight bogeys between holes 4 and 6. She later swapped a birdie with another bogey on the back nine before ending with an over par
“It was totally different from the first round as it is very windy today. I had problems with my iron and could not hit as many right spots as I would want to. That’s why I had four bogeys against three birdies,” said the teenager who just reserved a spot in the national rising star team on Friday.
With a huge 17-stroke advantage over Passarawan Athipansiri going to the Monday’s final, Alisa is the heavy favourite to lift up the trophy.
“In the final round, I will go out there with the same game plan by hitting the fairways and the greens to create as many birdie chances as possible,” she added.
In the A Boys competition, Chinese Kaichen Xia, troubled by strong winds after the turn, settled with a 75 and a two-day total of three over-par-147, a shot ahead of two Thais Polakrit Pawichai and Ingtawan Wangrungwichaisri, each with a 74 and four over-par-148.
Ingtawan from Chiang Mai produced a solid front nine performance with three birdies against just one bogey before squandering his lead away by committing two double bogeys on the 12th and 18th holes.
“I was playing quite well until on the back nine where it was windy. I couldn’t control my shots, hitting a bad tee shot (12th hole) and needed three putts (on 18th),” said the timid boy from the northern part of Thailand.
“However, I think I have played beyond my expectation this week. I’m really determined to have a great result, so I will give my all in the final round,” Ingtawan said.
NTT Data offers firms blockchain-based system to develop loyalty program
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2022
NTT Data (Thailand) Co Ltd, a subsidiary of NTT Data Corporation and a global digital business and IT service leader, is suggesting the use of blockchain technology to tide over the problem of many organisations stumbling in developing a loyalty program.
The company said the use of blockchain technology would streamline the complex work process, reduce operating costs and securely link data. It would provide prompt solutions to customers, and create a seamless experience with the use of smart contract on a blockchain ecosystem to establish a centralised platform. Such a platform would help connect allies and partners directly in one ecosystem without going through a medium, and it would provide a seamless key touchpoint communication system to maintain a sustainable customer base.
Hironari Tomioka, President and Chief Executive Officer of NTT DATA (Thailand) Co., Ltd. reveals that the loyalty program will maintain good relations between the brand and customers in the long run and become part of the brand’s main strategy to create good customer relations that will lead to brand loyalty and new marketing opportunities by providing a seamless, convenient, and real-time experience as much as possible through a Blockchain ecosystem to connect various allies and rapidly exchange data via a highly secured platform with high flexibility to meet various customer demands.
The Global Loyalty Programs Market Intelligence Report 2022 of the first quarter indicates that the loyalty program market is expected to grow 12.6% with 142,636.8 million U.S. dollar value by the end of 2022, and the global market is expected to grow 12.2% during 2022-2026 with 225,907.9 billion U.S. dollar in 2026.
NTT DATA have has been developing Blockchain ecosystems widely to combine business, technology, and security together including loyalty programs that integrate back-end systems from allies in various industries such as finance, banking, insurance, and retail through Blockchain API (Application Program Interface) to allow users to access the loyalty programs on their registered platform.
They may also collect and use points earned from the allies on one platform where the system automatically calculates the points of the allies. The data on the platform may also be applied to ongoing business developments, services, and customer relations.
Loyalty Program with Blockchain-based ensures good customer relations that will lead to sustainable brand loyalty through the Key Touchpoint consumer communication platform. Allies and partners under the same ecosystem may analyze and understand customer needs, develop demanded products/services, and enhance the experience overall.
“Recently, NTT DATA provides a loyalty program with Blockchain-based to a major Australian ticket booking company. The program is integrated with a digital wallet platform to enhance the user experience by counting the points automatically when a user pays with a credit card and coupons on the platform in real time. It combines the payment experience, point collection, and discount claims offered by many providers on one platform that leads to repurchases, new product offers, and better image”. Hironari concluded.
Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2023
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2022
Gartner, Inc. announced its list of 10 top strategic technology trends that organizations need to explore in 2023.
“To enhance their organization’s financial position during times of economic turbulence, CIOs and IT executives must look beyond cost savings to new forms of operational excellence while continuing to accelerate digital transformation,” said Frances Karamouzis, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “The Gartner strategic technology trends for 2023 are built around three themes — optimize, scale and pioneer — where technologies can help organizations optimize resilience, operations or trust, scale vertical solutions and product delivery, and pioneer with new forms of engagement accelerated responses or opportunity.”
“However, in 2023, delivering technology will not be enough. These themes are impacted by environmental, social and governance (ESG) expectations and regulations, which translate into the shared responsibility to apply sustainable technologies. Every technology investment will need to be set off against its impact on the environment, keeping future generations in mind. ‘Sustainable by default’ as an objective requires sustainable technology,” said David Groombridge, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner.
The top strategic technology trends for 2023 are:
Sustainability
Sustainability traverses all of the strategic technology trends for 2023. In a recent Gartner survey, CEOs reported that environmental and social changes are now a top three priority for investors, after profit and revenue. This means that executives must invest more in innovative solutions that are designed to address ESG demand to meet sustainability goals. To do this, organizations need a new sustainable technology framework that increases the energy and material efficiency of IT services, enables enterprise sustainability through technologies like traceability, analytics, renewable energy and AI, and deploys IT solutions to help customers achieve their own sustainability goals.
Pioneer
Metaverse
Gartner defines a metaverse as a collective virtual 3D shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. A metaverse is persistent, providing enhanced immersive experiences. Gartner expects that a complete metaverse will be device-independent and won’t be owned by a single vendor. It will have a virtual economy of itself, enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). By 2027, Gartner predicts that over 40% of large organizations worldwide will use a combination of Web3, AR cloud and digital twins in metaverse-based projects aimed at increasing revenue.
Super apps
A super app combines the features of an app, a platform and an ecosystem in one application. It not only has its own set of functionalities, but it also provides a platform for third parties to develop and publish their own mini-apps on. By 2027, Gartner predicts that more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of multiple super apps.
“Although most examples of super apps are mobile apps, the concept can also be applied to desktop client applications, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, with the key being that a super app can consolidate and replace multiple apps for customer or employee use,” said Karamouzis.
Adaptive AI
Adaptive AI systems aim to continuously retrain models and learn within runtime and development environments based on new data to adapt quickly to changes in real-world circumstances that were not foreseen or available during initial development. They use real-time feedback to change their learning dynamically and adjust goals. This makes them suitable for operations where rapid changes in the external environment or changing enterprise goals require an optimized response.
Optimize
Digital Immune System
76 % of teams responsible for digital products are now also responsible for revenue generation. CIOs are looking for new practices and approaches that their teams can adopt to deliver that high business value, along with mitigating risk and increasing customer satisfaction. A digital immune system provides such a roadmap.
Digital immunity combines data-driven insight into operations, automated and extreme testing, automated incident resolution, software engineering within IT operations and security in the application supply chain to increase the resilience and stability of systems. Gartner predicts that by 2025, organizations that invest in building digital immunity will reduce system downtime by up to 80% – and that translates directly into higher revenue.
Applied Observability
Observable data reflects the digitized artefacts, such as logs, traces, API calls, dwell time, downloads and file transfers, that appear when any stakeholder takes any kind of action. Applied observability feeds these observable artefacts back in a highly orchestrated and integrated approach to accelerate organizational decision-making.
“Applied observability enables organizations to exploit their data artefacts for competitive advantage,” said Karamouzis “It is powerful because it elevates the strategic importance of the right data at the right time for rapid action based on confirmed stakeholder actions, rather than intentions. When planned strategically and executed successfully, applied observability is the most powerful source of data-driven decision-making.”
AI Trust, Risk and Security Management
Many organizations are not well prepared to manage AI risks. A Gartner survey in the US, UK and Germany found that 41% of organizations had experienced an AI privacy breach or security incident. However, that same survey found that organizations that actively managed AI risk, privacy and security achieved improved AI project results. More of their AI projects moved from proof-of-concept status into production and achieved more business value than did AI projects in organizations that did not actively manage these functions.
Organizations must implement new capabilities to ensure model reliability, trustworthiness, security and data protection. AI trust, risk and security management (TRiSM) requires participants from different business units to work together to implement new measures.
Scale
Industry Cloud Platforms
Industry cloud platforms offer a combination of SaaS, platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providing industry-specific sets of modular capabilities to support specific industry business use cases. Enterprises can use the packaged capabilities of industry cloud platforms as building blocks to compose unique and differentiating digital business initiatives, providing agility, innovation and reduced time to market, while avoiding lock-in.
By 2027, Gartner predicts that more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives.
Platform Engineering
Platform engineering is the discipline of building and operating self-service internal developer platforms for software delivery and life cycle management. The goal of platform engineering is to optimize the developer experience and accelerate product teams’ delivery of customer value.
Gartner predicts that 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams by 2026 and that 75% of those will include developer self-service portals.
Wireless Value Realization
While no single technology will dominate, enterprises will use a spectrum of wireless solutions to cater for all environments, from Wi-Fi in the office, through services for mobile devices, to low-power services and even radio connectivity. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of enterprises will be using five or more wireless technologies simultaneously.
As networks move beyond pure connectivity, they will provide insight using built-in analysis and low-power systems will harvest energy directly from the network. This means the network will become a source of direct business value.
This year’s top strategic technology trends highlight those trends that will drive significant disruption and opportunity over the next five to 10 years. Gartner clients can read more in the Gartner Special Report “Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2023.”
PTTEP sells off its Angola operations to Somoil Bloco
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2022
PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP) has informed the Stock Exchange of Thailand that it is selling off its operations in Angola.
PTTEP CEO Montri Rawanchaikul said his company had informed SET on Friday that it has decided to sell all its investments in the deep offshore Block 17/06 in Angola to Somoil Bloco 17/06, a subsidiary of Sociedade Petrolifera Angolana.
The sale is being overseen by PTTEP (Angola) Corporation and will be completed by mid-next year, Montri said.
PTTEP’s Block 17/06 in the west of Angola is at development stage. Once the block has been sold off, all PTTEP’s operations in Angola will come to a halt in line with the company’s strategy, Montri added.
CPF to buy back 200 million shares in 3rd go at stabilising its stock price
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2022
Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF)’s board of directors has resolved to buy back 200 million more shares for the third time in two years to prevent its stocks from falling.
The board announced that CPF will start buying back 200 million shares or 2.32% of its paid-up shares from Monday to June 18, and will pay no higher than 115% of the average closing price of the stock over five working days.
Between October 31 and December 13, the average price of CPF shares was 24.36 baht apiece.
The board said it has decided to carry out another round of buyback because it believes the stock market value is lower than the stock’s book value.
The board is also confident that the buyback will result in an increase in CPF’s return on equity (ROE) and earnings per share.
Before the board announced the latest round of buybacks, CPF’s stocks closed at 23.80 baht, marking a 6.67% drop year to date (YTD). The shares’ price vs EPS ratio is at 10.60 and price to book value ratio of 0.79, the board said.
CPF insists that it has enough cash to carry out the new round of buybacks. As of September 30, the CPF had 2.23 billion baht in cash and said it expects to receive another 9.5 billion baht in dividends from its subsidiaries in the fourth quarter for profits earned in the first half of this year.
Hence, the company said it is confident it will have enough cash to buy back shares.
CPF has bought back its shares twice before to stop its price from dropping in the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The first buyback was launched on March 13, 2020, when the company said it would buy back 400 million shares or 4.65% of all paid-up shares for 10 billion baht. The first buyback round lasted from April 1 to September 30.
CPF’s shares had dipped to the lowest in four years, below the resistance line of 20 baht to 18.70 baht per share on the day the board resolved to buy back the shares.
As of September 30, CPF had bought back 197.673 million shares or 2.30% worth 6.084 billion. The programme drove up CPF’s shares to gradually peak at 35.25 baht on July 20, 2020, before sliding back to 28 baht per share at the end of the programme.
Then on September 30, 2021, the board resolved to spend another 10 billion baht to buy back more shares from October 15 to April 14, 2022. During this period, CPF’s share price fluctuated in the 25.75 to 23.50 range.
Brokerage firm CGS-CIMB said the actual value of CPF’s shares was about 30.65 baht per share and recommended that people buy up to sell at a profit when the price rises to 33 baht.
An Argentina fan holds a replica World Cup trophy as they celebrate winning the World Cup
Argentina fans celebrate winning the World Cup
General view as Argentina fans celebrate with flares after winning the World Cup
Argentina fans celebrate winning the World Cup at the Obelisk with an image of Lionel Messi
Argentina fans celebrate winning the World Cup at the Obelisk with an image of Lionel Messi and fireworks
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