H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (17 August 2018) – Corporate Japan rakes in record quarterly profit + The Ultimate List Of Books To Base Your Life On

August 17, 2018 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (17 August 2018) – Corporate Japan rakes in record quarterly profit + The Ultimate List Of Books To Base Your Life On

Companies

  • Corporate Japan rakes in record quarterly profit; Led by manufacturers, one in four companies posted all-time highs. Tokyo Electron booked another record profit as sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment grew. Nidec also posted a record thanks to steady sales of motor used in electric vehicles and robots. (Nikkei)
  • Japan’s Start Today gives clothes retailers a glimpse of the future: A million or so Japanese are using the firm’s “Zozosuit” (Economist)
  • Japanese regulators are investigating Apple Inc over allegations it unfairly pressured Yahoo Japan Corp to slow the expansion of its online games platform, which competes with Apple’s App Store (Reuters)
  • China’s leading online parenting firm Babytree Group, backed by Alibaba, plans to raise up to $1 billion in a HK IPO in Oct (ISH)
  • Apple supplier Luxshare plans camera module IPO as next leap; Chinese company’s growth threatens rivals in Taiwan and South Korea (Nikkei)
  • com losses surge on soaring spending and investment (SCMP); China’s JD.com looks to warehousing assets to help revive profits (Reuters)
  • Google to debut display-equipped AI speaker before holidays; Taiwan suppliers told to prepare for hardware blitz to challenge Amazon. Most of the Google Home lineup is produced by Quanta Computer, a key builder of Apple’s MacBooks.(Nikkei)
  • The Makers of iPhones and Laptops Are Prepping for a Trade War. Taiwan’s six largest contract electronics makers — Compal Electronics, Foxconn flagship Hon Hai Precision, Inventec, Pegatron, Quanta Computer, and Wistron — raked in NT$9.11 trillion ($296 billion) of revenue in 2017 (Bloomberg)
  • VGI spearheads regional growth of BTS with modern approach in advertising; VGI boasts of in-building advertisement billing worth about HK$78 million yearly from a total of about 175 buildings (SCMP)

BATTSS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Softbank, Samsung

  • Alibaba tweaks a controversial legal structure; Jack Ma’s role in the firm’s “variable interest entities” will be reduced (Economist)
  • Tencent Slump Shows What Happens When Beijing Flips the Switch (Bloomberg)
  • SoftBank and Thai telecom firm to launch cheap, fast internet exchange service (JT)

FAANNMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Netflix, Microsoft, Google

  • Amazon could be the next great disruptor in cinema (qz)
  • Nvidia Clears Its Crypto Cloud: A volatile crypto market has been a distraction for the chip maker-and its investors (WSJ1, WSJ2); As Nvidia expands in artificial intelligence, Intel defends turf (Reuters); Nvidia’s Turing Makes Graphics Dreams Come True (EETimes)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Redcore CEO admits ‘100pc China-developed browser’ is built on Google’s Chrome, says writing code from scratch would ‘take many years’ (SCMP)
  • China regulator orders bailout of peer-to-peer lenders by managers of distressed assets (SCMP)
  • Digital payment firms fight for Hong Kong market (Reuters)
  • Indian streaming firm Hotstar sees blended revenues as winning strategy (Reuters)
  • Nazara Tech invests in VR gaming firm InstaSportz; With the acquisition, Nazara enters the offline gaming space with interactive entertainment through VR lounges in Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities across India (Livemint)
  • How This Google-Backed Startup Cracked The Code To Hyper Convenience In India (Forbes)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • The race is on to dominate quantum computing (Economist)
  • The cautionary tale of Blue Apron’s growth strategy (qz)
  • DoorDash Valuation Nearly Triples to $4 Billion in Six Months (Bloomberg)
  • Why Can’t Europe Do Tech? This is the best moment in decades for the continent to battle its way back to relevance. Its startups need to act like it. (Bloomberg)
  • Battery technologies seen as new class of ‘stranded assets’ as innovation rushes ahead (JT)
  • Monzo poised to join ranks of Europe’s fintech ‘unicorns’; UK digital bank lines up $150m fundraising as it eyes $1.5bn valuation (FT)

Life

  • The Ultimate List Of Books To Base Your Life On (Medium)
  • Innovation renaissance depends on releasing our inner Medicis (AFR)
  • Knowing When Your Investment Process Has Failed (Validea)
  • The Half-Life of Investment Strategies (Ben Carlson)
  • Top Insights from Twilio CMO Sara Varni: Five Tips on Marketing and Life (Medium)

Filed under Innovation

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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