Line Man’s success attracts investment from top capital firm
Jul 30. 2020
By The Nation
Growth capital firm, BRV Capital Management, is planning to invest US$110 million (approximately Bt3.3 billion) in Line Man, a top “daily life assistant” delivery app in Thailand.
This is the first time that any branch of the Line Group has secured an investment of this size for one of its overseas services, which proves that Line Man’s success in Thailand has a large scope for future growth.
The investment comes at a time when Line Man is merging with Wongnai Media Co, a leading “restaurant review and discovery platform” in Thailand, which has been Line Man’s restaurant partner since 2016.
Wongnai has the largest restaurant database in Thailand with more than 400,000 restaurants nationwide. Line Man app users are also able to order food via the Wongnai database.
Line Man provides six services, namely food delivery, groceries, convenience store items and parcels, along with messenger and taxi-hailing services.
Now partnering with more than 100,000 restaurants, Line Man currently operates in Bangkok, Nonthaburi, Samut Prakan, Nakhon Pathom, Samut Sakhon, Ayutthaya, Chonburi and Chiang Mai, and plans to cover 15 more areas in Thailand soon.
“We’re excited to be working with BRV Capital Management, which has repeatedly shown it knows how to find and develop winners,” said Eunjung Lee, chief of Line Plus Corporation’s global business for Southeast Asia.
“Since its launch four years ago, Line Man has grown into the most popular delivery application for Thai people – and now, this investment will help take it to the next level.”
BRV is a growth capital firm that led early rounds in PayPal and Waze, and operates offices in South Korea, Japan, and China. Based on the firm’s experiences investing in companies in Silicon Valley and around the world, BRV said it decided to invest in Line Man because of its ongoing success in delivering innovative services in the Thai market, becoming a “daily assistant” for local users.
BRV Capital Management, an affiliated entity of US-based BlueRun Ventures, is an Asia-focused growth investment platform, with an active presence across Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and California.
The self-built home market has taken a hit as people have become uncertain about the Thai economy and are avoiding spending large amounts of money since March, after the Covid-19 outbreak, a top executive said.
Manu Trakulwattanakit, managing director of Seacon, a homebuilding company, said:
“In the first half of 2020, the company had accumulated sales of only Bt500 million, down 12.5 per cent from Bt650 million in the same period last year,” he said.
“Our survey found that office workers tend to put off building houses in the range of Bt2 million to Bt5 million because they are uncertain about their job security during economic contraction and would avoid creating long-term debt.
“Thankfully, the company’s largest customers are those who build houses in the range of Bt5 million to Bt10 million, accounting for 48.27 per cent of customer base, and they are still proceeding with their home-building plans despite the pandemic,” he added. “The same goes for those who build houses worth over Bt10 million, accounting for 13.8 per cent of company’s customers.”
Manu added that the company had also put off investment projects with partners in Eastern Economic Corridor areas, as many of them have been affected by the outbreak and lockdown measures. “The company estimated that it could lose around 10 per cent of revenue due to the postponement of these projects,” he added.
“We have set the revenue target for 2020 at Bt1.4 billion, the same as last year,” added Manu. “In the second half of the year, Seacon will focus on event exhibitions and working with the Home Builder Associations, which should help us achieve the target, or miss by less than 5 per cent.”
Manu also said the homebuilding market this year would see a drop of 10 per cent from Bt12 billion to Bt13 billion last year, if Thailand doesn’t face a second wave of infections.
Amazon’s virus stumbles have been a boon for Walmart and Target
CorporateJul 31. 2020The Kent fulfillment center in May. Amazon has seen a slip in market share amid the pandemic. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Jovelle Tamayo.
By The Washington Post · Jay Greene, Abha Bhattarai · BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, RETAIL
SEATTLE – For Amazon, five straight months of sustained mania triggered by the pandemic has shaken the retail giant and created an abrupt opening for rivals.
Amazon is still the big gorilla online, and sales have surged amid the pandemic. But Amazon’s shipping delays and out-of-stock items meant online shoppers turned to retailers including Walmart and Target, whose networks of brick-and-mortar shops suddenly became an advantage for picking up and shipping e-commerce purchases quickly. Within Amazon’s warehouses, coronavirus safety measures have resulted in workers picking items from shelves and loading them into trucks more slowly – and with no end to the virus in sight, it is difficult to forecast a return to full, precrisis efficiency.
Its share of U.S. e-commerce fell from 42.1% in January to 38.5% in June, according to data from Rakuten Intelligence. In April, it hit a low of 34.2%. At the same time, Target’s share grew from 2.2% to 3.5 percent and Walmart’s grew from 4.2% to 5%.
Amazon reported a 40% surge in revenue Thursday, to $88.9 billion, part of an overall rising tide in sales amid the pandemic that has benefited online retailers. But its slip in market share in comparison with other retailers reveals an unexpected fickleness in consumer habits.
Mike Mastela, a cloud security specialist in Livonia, Mich., who used to buy everything on Amazon Prime, has started opting for same-day pickup from Target for items such as undershirts and dog food. “I’m honestly thinking about dropping my Prime membership simply because I have yet to see a two-day delivery in months,” the 67-year-old said.
More than a dozen interviews with warehouse workers, third-party sellers, current and former executives, and retail experts painted a portrait of a company renowned for its wealth of consumer data and logistics expertise scrambling to adapt and recover from the coronavirus crisis, even months into it.
“It was a shocking display from a company that built itself up as a distribution company,” said Paula Rosenblum, an analyst for Retail Systems Research in Miami. “When the rubber met the road, they couldn’t get the products people wanted.”
Chief executive Jeff Bezos acknowledged as much during his testimony Wednesday before a House subcommittee looking into claims that Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook have abused their dominant positions as tech leaders to thwart competition. Asked if Amazon designated devices such as its Fire TV, Echo speakers and Ring doorbell as essential items at the start of the pandemic, giving them the same sort of shipping priority as disinfectant and toilet paper, Bezos said he didn’t know.
“What I can tell you is that we had there was no playbook for this,” Bezos said. “We moved very quickly. Demand went through the roof, (and it) was like having a holiday selling season but in March, and we had to make a lot of decisions very rapidly.”
(Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The company is “balancing capacity across our network of fulfillment centers while ensuring we’re meeting social distancing and safety measures to keep our teams safe,” spokesman Dan Perlet said in a statement. He said the company is moving quickly to restore delivery speeds.
Amazon declined to make senior executives available for interviews.
Former and current Amazon executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly say no company could fully prepare for the crush of orders stemming from a global pandemic. Amazon spends six months preparing for inventory needs for the holidays, then three staffing up. The pandemic gave Amazon no time to prepare, while snarling supply chains and scaring warehouse staffers who often work side by side with colleagues.
Of course, Amazon’s revenue has continued to grow in recent months amid a surge in online shopping as people stay home and many stores remain closed. But the company lost an opportunity to extend its lead over rivals.
All of the executives said they expect Amazon to eventually regain its footing as shoppers edge back toward patterns that were in place before the pandemic, when the digital marketplace was often the first stop for online shoppers. And its market-share dip appeared to bottom out in June at 34.2%, according to Rakuten.
But even several months into the pandemic, Amazon still cannot always deliver packages to its Prime customers within two days. And its annual Prime Day marketing event – typically held in July – has yet to be scheduled.
As the coronavirus spread and local and state governments ordered people to stay home, Amazon’s logistics empire broke down. The vast network of hundreds of warehouses, return facilities and distribution stations, connected by vans, trucks and airplanes owned by Amazon and its partners, had previously enabled Amazon to deliver orders within a day or two to shoppers who signed up for Prime, which now counts more than 100 million members globally.
Since March, Amazon’s 23-person senior leadership team has been holding virtual meetings every few days to brainstorm responses to the company’s supply-chain and labor challenges, said a person familiar with the meetings who was not authorized to discuss them publicly and commented on the condition of anonymity.
The system was buckling under the weight of orders that had surged as though every day was Black Friday. But Amazon had not hired the tens of thousands of warehouse workers it typically does for the holidays. By April, the company had announced it would hire 175,000 new employees, pushing its total global workforce to 840,400.
But at first, work in the warehouses was not adapted for the virus, which emerged in some of its locations in Italy and Spain by mid-March and days later in its U.S. warehouses, from New York to California and Michigan to Texas. Amazon initially continued to hold meetings at the start of each shift, discussing safety precautions while scores of workers stood shoulder to shoulder, according to interviews with workers. It continued to press warehouse staffs to meet the rate at which it wanted workers to fulfill orders.
Amazon eliminated stand-up meetings during shifts in favor of new communication methods such as signboards and text messages, and began staggering shift start times and break times to reduce congestion, the company said March 24. Workers said the company suspended requirements to fill orders within time limits after complaints that tallying those metrics discouraged sanitary practices such as washing hands after sneezing.
Warehouse workers pressed for paid time off for employees who felt sick or needed to quarantine, and for the temporarily closure of warehouses where workers tested positive, so the facilities could be cleaned. Workers protested and complained that Amazon was not doing enough to protect them; the company countered that it was following public health guidelines.
As the company’s woes became more public, executives scrambled to come up with a plan. Workers in its headquarters were reassigned to work on safety, handling tasks such as procuring masks, developing screening systems and setting up testing labs. Amazon cut the number of warehouse workers loading parcels onto trucks from two to one to better allow social distancing.
“People’s only job became how to keep workers safe,” said one of the former executives, who requested anonymity because the person still does business with the company.
But the safety changes heightened delays. Amazon still struggles to get packages out of its warehouses at pre-pandemic rates.
In late May, in its warehouse in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Amazon showed off its reconfigured break rooms, spreading tables out to encourage social distancing. The warehouse floors were dotted with hand sanitizer stations, and tape marked directions employees should walk so as not create bottlenecks.
At some, but not all, of its warehouses, Amazon has resumed pushing workers to meet specific targets for the speeds at which they stow, pick and pack items, according to workers at warehouses in New Jersey, Michigan and California. Amazon’s Perlet disputed that, but didn’t say whether the company tracked speeds at all its warehouses.
Regardless, the pace is brisk, and the company is pushing workers to log long hours as though every day is Prime Day, said Rachel Belz, who stocks shelves at Amazon’s West Deptford, N.J., warehouse.
“They’re just not calling it that. But we’re all working extra,” said Belz, who is logging 55-hour workweeks now, up from the 44-hour weeks she normally works.
For consumers, the delays in getting products were only partly caused by the unexpected flood of orders and warehouse processes. Many goods were also out of stock. On March 17, Amazon told sellers they could no longer ship nonessential goods to its warehouses, effectively forcing them to ship the items to consumers themselves if they hoped to register sales. And it delayed shipping on products not deemed crucial, leaving consumers with long waits.
Many of the items that were in short supply at the start of the pandemic, such as toilet paper and liquid hand soap, are readily available on the site now. But Amazon shoppers still have a hard time finding Purell hand sanitizer and Lysol disinfectant wipes. Given demand, manufacturers are allocating supplies, which often means Amazon can’t keep the items in stock, Perlet said.
More than half of the retail sales on Amazon are from third-party merchants who sell at the company’s digital bazaar. Amazon’s emphasis on essential items forced many sellers to take on their own shipping, a task many were ill-equipped to handle. That caused so many struggles that shoppers’ negative reviews for third-party sellers are at record levels, according to the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse.
As Amazon’s selection dried up or got delayed, consumers turned to competitors such as Walmart and Target and placed online orders for pickup at the chains’ stores. They have a combined 6,600 stores nationwide. Amazon has about 560 stores, the vast majority of them Whole Foods Markets.
Amazon has lost some customers like Jade Wang, who used to do almost all of her shopping on the site. She grew frustrated in March at the lack of basic items such as paper towels and disposable gloves and delayed or canceled orders.
So Wang, who lives in Austin, turned to Target, Office Depot, Chewy and AliExpress instead, as well as smaller online shops.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, it was item availability that drove me to other retailers,” said Wang, 36, who runs the start-up program at Cloudflare, a website security company. Four months later, she says, she is “relying a lot more on Target because their shipping is fast.” Plus, she can opt for same-day delivery.
Amazon’s rivals fared better in large measure, experts said, because of one distinct advantage: physical stores spread across the country. Walmart customers, for example, were able to order some items online and have them dropped into their trunks at local stores the same day, offering more-reliable selection and faster delivery.
Walmart moved quickly to offer “contactless” pickup and delivery options. By April, it had rolled out two-hour express deliveries from many of its 4,750 U.S. stores and had hired more than 150,000 workers to stock shelves, pick groceries and handle pickup orders.
Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce sales grew 74% in the three months ending May 1. Online sales at Target, meanwhile, have more than doubled during the pandemic, with e-commerce growing a record 282% in April alone.
“We’ve just seen Cyber Monday occur almost every day, except the volume is twice the size,” Brian Cornell, Target’s chief executive, said in an earnings call in May.
Target now fills about 80% of its online orders from its 1,900 stores. When the pandemic hit, the company quickly doubled the number of workers at its same-day home delivery service, Shipt, from 100,000 to 200,000 and rerouted merchandise to the stores that needed it most.
More than 5 million shoppers used the company’s drive-up pickup service during the first quarter, with drive-up orders – the company’s most popular service – increasingly nearly 1,000% in April from a year earlier, John Mulligan, Target’s chief operating officer, said in the earnings call.
Some of that growth was cannibalized from in-store sales, Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Colin Sebastian said, as loyal Walmart and Target shoppers switched from in-store to online shopping. Sebastian is bullish on Amazon and believes the company has stabilized its logistics operations.
Still, he added, “Amazon is typically the disrupter. And in this case, Amazon was disrupted.”
PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP) has refocused its 10-year business strategy for the post-pandemic era.
“After evaluating the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the changing industry landscape, PTTEP has sharpened business plans and set goals for 2030 of maintaining our competitiveness and ensuring sustainable growth,” said president and chief executive officer Phongsthorn Thavisin today.
“Our goals are going to be quite a challenge, especially in this dynamic business environment. Under the revised plans, the company will focus on continuously reducing unit costs to reach the top quartile in the industry. This will give us resilience to oil price volatility while sustaining operating cash flow to support investment in exploration and production projects as well as business acquisitions.”
Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia and the Middle East would remain the focus for PTTEP investments, said Phongsthorn.
“We expect an average production growth rate [CAGR] of 5 per cent and aim to maintain a reserves-to-production ratio [R/P ratio] of 7 years,” he added.
As part of its 10-year strategy, the company is also hunting new business.
“In addition to our core business, PTTEP is also seeking opportunities to boost the fully integrated liquefied natural gas [LNG] business, both upstream and liquefaction, and investing in new businesses including power, and robotics and artificial intelligence, to overcome challenges in energy transition and to create long-term growth. The new business is targeted to contribute 20 per cent to net income in 2030,” Phongsthorn said.
president and chief executive officer Phongsthorn Thavisin
In the first half of this year, PTTEP generated total revenue of US$2.779 billion (Bt87.549 billion) – 7 per cent down from the $3.001 billion (Bt94.830 billion) it generated in the same period of 2019.
Average sales volume in the first half was 345,207 barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOED), a rise of by 6 per cent from the 326,971 BOED in the same period last year, driven by the acquisition of Murphy Oil Corporation’s business in Malaysia and Partex Holding.
However, as a consequence of the Covid-19 outbreak and oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia in March this year, global demand for energy has crashed while the oil price has fallen more than 50 per cent this year.
As a result, PTTEP’s average selling price dropped 15 per cent to $40.15 per barrel compared to $47.26 in the same period last year.
Nonetheless, the company’s selling price fell proportionately less than the crude oil price since the natural gas price has already been secured with sales agreements where the price formula is linked to fuel oil and the average price over the past six to 24 months.
While crude oil accounts for roughly 30 per cent of PTTEP’s total sales volume and is directly impacted by oil price volatility, the company has entered into oil price hedging contracts for a certain portion of its trade. Meanwhile, PTTEP recorded an impairment loss of $47 million, primarily from its Mariana Oil Sands project in Canada as forecasted long-term low oil prices indicated project development was uncommercial.
Accordingly, PTTEP reported a net profit of $409 million (Bt12.935 billion) in the first half of 2019, a drop of 51 per cent from the previous year’s $827 million (Bt26.163 billion).
In the second quarter of 2020, PTTEP posted total revenue of $1.095 billion (equivalent to Bt34.954 billion) and net profit of $134 million (Bt4.323 billion). This was mainly due to the lower sales volume and average selling price, following lower energy demand amid the impact of Covid-19 and the falling global oil price.
Today (July 30) PTTEP’s board approved an interim dividend payment for the first six months of Bt1.50 per share, to be made on August 28.
Phongsthorn said the volatile global oil price together with the Covid-19 outbreak continue to have an impact on domestic energy demand.
Asa result, PTTEP has cut its 2020 sales target by 9 per cent to 355,000 BOED.
However, the company said it has cut its initial 2020 expenditure of Bt143.012 billion by 15-20 per cent by reducing operating costs and deferring exploration activities in some projects. The move will have no impact on future operations or the energy supply of the country, said PTTEP.
Krungthai Card (KTC) is lowering interest rates and usage fees from August 1, in line with the rate specified by the Bank of Thailand.
Annual interest and usage fee rates will be cut to 16 per cent for all KTC credit cards and adjusted to 25 per cent for KTC Proud revolving loans and KTC Cash installment loans.
Said KTC president and CEO Rathian Srimongkol: “[T]he firm is supporting the Finance Ministry and Bank of Thailand’s policies to provide aid in the form of personal loans to card members who have been affected by Covid-19 in a full force and consistent manner, having covered over 3.5 million accounts for all KTC credit card, personal loan and car title deed loan members.”
KTC has also cut minimum payment rates for credit cards from 10 per cent to 5 per cent from April 2020 to 2021, 8 per cent in 2022, and 10 per cent in 2023.
Meanwhile, KTC Proud revolving loan customers currently have a minimum payment rate of 3 per cent, which is within the relief guidelines.
KTC said it has also provided relief for customers directly affected by the Covid-19 situation, for instance by switching them to long-term personal loans and cutting installment payments by 30 per cent until December 31.
As of June 30, about 4,000 customers have switched to long-term personal loans worth a total Bt300 million, with 90 customers opting for debt payment suspension, said the firm.
Automation in the ‘Age of With’ – speeding up your business with the human element
Biz insightsJul 30. 2020Nitin Modi, director of Business Process Solutions, Deloitte Thailand
By Nitin Modi Special to The Nation
With “Work from Anywhere” becoming the new normal in the Covid-19 era, organisations are increasingly looking to adopt virtual business operational models, such as enterprise-wide digitisation and automation of back-office processes.
It remains the case that advanced digital technologies – such as artificial intelligence, robotics and cloud transformation – will be the principal enabler of business reinvention. Despite the rise of the machine, the imperative is that the technological and human domains work together to enhance value, and eventually lead to better outcomes.
What do the new human resources and finance of today, tomorrow and thereafter look like and how can your organisation respond, recover and thrive in the new age of “Humans with Machines”.
Artificial intelligence has now come of age. Deloitte refers to this as “the Age of With” – a world where humans are aided and augmented by automation.
The power of automation is the power to reimagine the way organisations do things. But that can only happen when organisations understand the tools AI gives them and are ready to absorb and adopt these technologies.
The Age of With is about human collaboration made greater with the machines we invent. It’s about business leaders shifting their thinking from humans versus machines to humans with machines. In the Age of With, AI with automation can deliver business processes with speed and precision, and a human workforce with the freedom to focus on what is important.
The same business process automation capabilities can also be applied to high-value, decision-making tasks to help organisations thrive in the Age of With.
It’s about embracing technology transformation and new ways of doing business to gain competitive advantage and be more agile. Intelligent automation (IA) combines AI with automation. When this is brought together with Robotic Process Automation (RPA), it gives bots cognitive and sensory abilities that can increase the number and breadth of business processes, which can be automated and thus the value that can be captured.
The potential opportunities are significant: greater speed, more precision and accuracy, new, richer data enabling better decisions, and increased workforce capacity that frees workers to focus on higher-level, more fulfilling and value-add tasks.
According to Deloitte’s most recent Global Robotics survey, 53 per cent of respondents are already on their RPA journey.
While a simple rule-based RPA is currently most commonly used, it provides a compelling path to more advanced technologies. Of these, 38 per cent are piloting (1-10 automations), 12 per cent implementing (11-50 automations) and 8 per cent automating at scale (51+ automations) – twice as many as in previous years.
Organisations believe they can transform their business processes, achieving higher speed and accuracy by automating decisions on the basis of structured and unstructured inputs. They expect an average payback period of 15 months – and in the scaling phase just nine months.
What are the key factors for a successful business process automation journey?
• An enterprise-wide strategy for intelligent automation which helps to generate higher returns in workforce capacity, cost reduction and revenues.
• Combining RPA and artificial intelligence (AI), leading to an average increase in revenue of 9 per cent, against 3 per cent in those that do not combine the technologies.
• Technology, infrastructure and cybersecurity in place, enabling a 21 per cent reduction in costs, compared to 13 per cent among organisations that lack these functions.
• Mature process definitions, standards and processes, which produce an average increase in back-office workforce capacity of 19 per cent compared to 12 per cent among organisations which do not.
• Clear understanding of how to capture value, leading to an average cost reduction of 21 per cent, against 15 per cent in firms with less understanding.
A supportive workforce
There is a widespread perception that automation may eliminate jobs. But 74 per cent of Deloitte’s survey respondents believe their workforce is either supportive or highly supportive of their intelligent automation strategy. The perceived level of stakeholder support tends to grow significantly as organisations move further along their automation journey. Thirty-two per cent of executives whose organisations are piloting said their workforce is unsupportive, compared to just 12 per cent which are in the process of implementing or scaling.
In conclusion, while companies have targeted traditionally low-value opportunities for task-based automation, going forward they will increasingly seek to incorporate more advanced analytical and AI technologies as part of their solutions.
Organisations that have mature process definitions, standards and process management and have the support of an effective Centre of Excellence are most likely to benefit most from intelligent automation.
Likewise, those organisations that develop the skills to redesign workflows and enhance the capabilities needed to harness intelligent automation will be better placed to take advantage of the opportunities.
As RPA can free up the workforce to focus on more strategic activities or customer-focused tasks, companies are now seeking to scale these solutions and make them smarter by integrating AI capabilities. With the advantage of robotic and intelligent automation (R&IA) technologies, companies can transform business processes – augmenting human labour with a digital workforce to drive better outcomes with enhanced productivity.
Nitin Modi is director of Business Process Solutions at Deloitte Thailand
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Rita Nazareth, Katherine Greifeld, Claire Ballentine · BUSINESS, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS
Stocks pared losses as a rally in big technology companies tempered concern over a slow economic rebound. A third day of falling bond yields sent financial shares slumping.
The S&P 500 came off session lows and the Nasdaq 100 climbed as Qualcomm Inc. soared on a strong sales forecast. After the close of regular trading, Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. jumped as results topped analyst estimates. Earlier Thursday, equities sank as data showed the U.S. economy had its sharpest contraction on record, while the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose. President Donald Trump raised the notion of delaying the Nov. 3 election until after the coronavirus pandemic eases.
Some corporate highlights:
– United Parcel Service Inc. jumped to a record on results that blew past estimates.
– Procter & Gamble Co. had a surge in sales amid high demand for detergent and continued stockpiling.
– Mastercard Inc. reported a rebound in consumer purchases on its cards in July.
– PayPal Holdings Inc. saw spending on its platform surge as more merchants switched to online sales.
– Johnson & Johnson’s experimental coronavirus vaccine protected a group of monkeys with a single shot, prompting it to start trials in humans this month.
Thanks to solid balance sheets and a suite of products that benefit from social distancing, giant tech companies have fared better during the pandemic-induced recession. The Nasdaq 100 is still poised to beat the S&P 500 for a 10th consecutive month – the longest winning stretch in 20 years. But with much of the good news already priced into markets, traders are looking for catalysts that could sustain further momentum in equities.
“We’re in that uncertain time between the hopeful third quarter rebound and some concern about the reopening process and what the recovery looks like,” said Tom Garretson, senior portfolio strategist for RBC Wealth Management. “We’re kind of in that void right now, waiting for things to play out.”
In a very busy day for earnings, investors also digested economic figures that highlighted the massive devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. While some numbers have improved after the reopenings, the recent spike in infections shows that the recovery will most likely take time. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that there are signs the increase in cases is starting to weigh on activity, while noting that the path forward for the economy is “extraordinarily uncertain.”
“It’s shocking no matter how you look at it,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Schwab Center for Financial Research. “Are things going to get better from here? I don’t think we know just yet. The virus is getting worse in a lot of areas, and some places have started to shut back down again. If you look at earnings in terms of beat rates, the results have actually been pretty good, granted the expectations bar has been set very low.”
There’s a distinction to be made between the S&P 500’s five biggest companies and all the rest, according to BCA Research.
The firm compared the total market value of the five – Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook, Google owner Alphabet and Microsoft Corp. – with the value of the other 495 companies in a chart last week. The top five’s value increased 266% from the start of 2015 through Tuesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In the same period, the value of the rest rose just 25% – and the entire gain occurred after the S&P 500 set this year’s low in March.
These are some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
– The S&P 500 decreased 0.4% as of 4 p.m. New York time.
– The Stoxx Europe 600 Index decreased 2.2%.
– The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.1%.
Currencies
– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index decreased 0.2%.
– The euro increased 0.4% to $1.1841.
– The Japanese yen appreciated 0.1% to 104.80 per dollar.
Bonds
– The yield on 10-year Treasurys declined four basis points to 0.54%.
– Germany’s 10-year yield sank four basis points to -0.54%.
– Britain’s 10-year yield fell three basis points to 0.088%.
Commodities
– The Bloomberg Commodity Index dipped 1.1%.
– West Texas Intermediate crude declined 2.8% to $40.13 a barrel.
Businesses are enjoying some relief from the impact of Covid-19, the Bank of Thailand said on Thursday (July 30), citing progress in economic reopening.
The central bank’s latest survey found businesses reported less impact in July after the fifth phase of lockdown easing.
A total of 297 large and small businesses were surveyed to reveal the pandemic’s affect on three channels – logistics, global supply chain disruption, and consumers’ behaviour shift.
On logistics issues, 21 per cent reported no impact in July, up from 17.2 per cent in June.
On global supply chain disruption, 33.4 per cent reported no impact, up from 25.9 per cent in June.
On consumers’ behaviour shift, businesses unaffected rose to 30.7 per cent, from 22.6 per cent in June.
The decreasing Covid-19 impact has also been positive for employment in many business sectors. However, tourism-related businesses such hotels and restaurants are still cutting working hours as the sector struggles to recover.
Machinery manufacturers and financial services, meanwhile, have been hit hardest by changes in consumer behaviour. Consumers are spending less, leading to low demand for machinery and also affecting loan volumes as well as quality of lending, said the survey.
An expert at Trinity Securities has advised investors to convert some of their stockholding into cash savings to prepare for the third quarter this year.
The second quarter saw the Thai stock market recover by 20 per cent, but negative sentiment persists over the Covid-19 pandemic, non-performing loans, the decline in GDP, and changes in asset values – all factors that are prompting investors to revise their investment strategy.
Nuttachart Mekmasin, a research analyst at Trinity Securities, said the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index rebounded quickly on hopes of economic recovery in the second half of 2020 but had hit a ceiling with no further rise expected soon.
He advised investors to hold 30 per cent in cash and invest 10 per cent in Thai stocks, 20 per cent in foreign stocks, 20 per cent in Thai and foreign bonds, 15 per cent in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), and 5 per cent in gold.
“Regarding foreign stocks, we advise investing 10 per cent in developed markets and another 10 per cent in emerging markets, especially Europe, Japan, and MSCI Emerging Markets,” he said.
“For REITs, we advise investing 10 per cent in foreign REITs because Thai REITs are focused on investment in assets affected by the Covid-19 impact.”
He pinpointed five factors that investors should follow during the second half of 2020:
1. Economic policymakers’ moves: Investors should follow any move to reduce injection of cash into the economic system as this will affect assets’ value.
2. Economic recovery and listed companies’ second-half performance: An absence of signs of recovery will trigger a severe market correction.
3. US-China conflict and US presidential election: These factors will affect the issuing of economic policies.
4. Thailand’s Covid-19 relief measures: Measures such as the Bank of Thailand’s debt payment holiday and the SET’s uptick rule will expire soon; investors will make more short sales if the SET does not extend the uptick rule period.
5. Opec’s agreement to cut oil production: The oil price will drop again if demand increases.
EconJul 31. 2020Lavaron Sangsnit, director general at the Fiscal Policy Office
By The Nation
The Finance Ministry has revised down its GDP projection for 2020 to an 8.5-per-cent contraction and will launch additional measures to boost tourism.
Lavaron Sangsnit, director general at the Fiscal Policy Office, said the ministry revised its forecast downwards from its original projection of 2.8 per cent growth.
“We forecast the economy will contract in a range of 8 to 9 per cent and exports in dollar terms will fall as much as 11 per cent, as Thailand’s trading partners have also been hit hard by Covid-19,” he told a press conference on Thursday (July 30).
Thailand’s 15 trading partners will suffer an average 4.1 per cent economic contraction, according to the Finance Ministry forecast.
Thailand’s economy is expected to plunge more than 10 per cent in the second quarter, figures for which are about to be released.
Despite the economic downturn, the baht is expected to remain strong at around Bt31.7/dollar this year. The Dubai crude oil price is forecast to be at $42 a barrel while the central bank is expected to maintain the policy rate at the current 0.5 per cent for the rest of the year, said Lavaron.
The number of foreign tourists will drop to 6.8 million from about 40 million last year.
The ministry is looking at additional measures to boost domestic tourism on top of the “Travel Together” scheme that subsidises 40 per cent of accommodation and travel costs for Thais holidaying in Thailand. So far, about 6,000 hotels of the total 60,000 nationwide have registered to participate in the scheme, he said.
The Finance Ministry is now working on new incentives for hotels to join.
“We do not expect [the scheme] to boost economic growth but we want to redistribute income nationwide,” said Lavaron.
He ruled out more relief cash handouts, arguing that the economy has started to recover.
“Out of our Bt1 trillion borrowing to aid economic recovery, about Bt200 billion is still unused and will be reserved for the future in case of a second wave of coronavirus,” he said.
The government will also accelerate infrastructure spending, which is expected to boost capital spending by 9.7 per cent year on year, he said.
However, private consumption is expected to fall by 2.6 per cent.
Due to the steep fall in exports and weakening consumption , private investment is expected to contract sharply by 12.6 per cent.
The Finance Ministry is more optimistic about next year’s outlook, forecasting GDP growth of between 4 and 5 per cent and export growth at 5 per cent. Foreign tourist arrivals next year are predicted to rise to 15 million-16 million.
The ministry expects that a coronavirus vaccine will be available by the middle of next year, which will boost the tourism industry.
Lavaron assured people that the government still had money to spend to boost the economy should a second wave of the virus occur. The Bank of Thailand recently forecast the Thai economy would shrink 8.1 per cent this year, though some research houses predict a 10-per-cent contraction.
The Kent fulfillment center in May. Amazon has seen a slip in market share amid the pandemic. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Jovelle Tamayo.
Nitin Modi, director of Business Process Solutions, Deloitte Thailand
Lavaron Sangsnit, director general at the Fiscal Policy Office
