Covid shrank the restaurant industry. That's not changing anytime soon
CNN.com - Top Stories / 2023-02-27 18:169
It's never been easy to operate a restaurant, and in recent years it's been even harder.

In 2020, Covid restrictions ground the nation's bustling restaurant industry to a halt. Since then, there have been significant signs of a rebound: Dining rooms have reopened and customers have returned to cafes, fine-dining establishments and fast food joints.

But there are fewer US restaurants today than in 2019. It's not clear when —if ever — they're coming back.

Last year, there were about 631,000 restaurants in the United States, according to data from Technomic, a restaurant research firm. That's roughly 72,000 fewer than in 2019, when there were 703,000 restaurants in the country.

That number could fall even further this year, to about 630,000 locations, according to Technomic, which doesn't foresee the number of restaurants in the US returning to pre-Covid levels even by 2026.


Sit-down restaurants, especially, are at a disadvantage as delivery and takeout remain popular. And with inflation still high, some potential customers are avoiding restaurants to save money. Meanwhile, restaurant operators are seeing their own costs, like rent and ingredients, rise, and say it's hard to hire staff.

With conditions so tough, some restaurant owners are advising newcomers to steer clear of the industry altogether.

If someone were to ask David Nayfeld, chef and co-owner of the San Francisco restaurants Che Fico and Che Fico Alimentari, whether to open a new restaurant right now, his answer would be no.

"I would say it is not a good time to go open a restaurant if you are not a seasoned and incredibly durable operator," he said. Especially now, when restaurant operators need experience and deep pockets in order to succeed, he added.

Even Nayfeld, himself an industry veteran who has worked at the famed Eleven Madison Park, is struggling. The pandemic led to "a really devastating few years that we're still working our way out of," he said.

Some have argued that the contraction is a painful but necessary correction.

"The narrative back pre-pandemic was that we were over-saturated … too many restaurants chasing too few consumer dollars," said David Henkes, senior principal at Technomic.


Indeed, before the pandemic, the number of restaurants was growing between half a percent and one percent each year, he said, adding that the recent decline served to "reset" the size of the market. Without those hurdles, however, that decrease would likely have happened more slowly, he noted.

Daniel Jacobs, a chef and restaurant owner, has seen his own network of restaurants shrink over the past few years.

Prior to the pandemic, he and his business partner Dan Van Rite operated three restaurants and a bakery, plus a catering operation and restaurant consulting business. Today, they are left with two Milwaukee restaurants, DanDan and EsterEv.

"Closing a restaurant is an incredibly difficult decision to make," Jacobs said. "We did our best during the pandemic to try and keep our teams together … at some point, you just gotta call it."


The rise of takeout and delivery during the pandemic helped multiple restaurants survive the pandemic.

DanDan, a Chinese American restaurant, had offered takeout for years. The restaurant "had that customer confidence that we were going to deliver quality products," he said.

EsterEv is a tasting-menu-only restaurant within a restaurant (functionally, a dining room located inside DanDan) open only on weekends, and "definitely wouldn't have [made it] if we had to pay rent on a space," Jacobs said.

The trend toward delivery and takeout has stuck, with restaurants reporting higher levels of off-premise orders. According to Revenue Management Solutions, a restaurant consultancy, delivery was up 11.4% in fast food and fast casual restaurants in January compared to last year.

"We increasingly like to get our food on the go," said David Portalatin, food service industry advisor for the NPD Group, a market research firm. "We're still a more home-centric society."

Plus, sit-down restaurants tend to be more expensive, which could drive cash-strapped customers away, said Portalatin. Even with rising grocery prices, eating at home is generally less expensive than dining out, and restaurants last year saw their foot traffic dip.

Full-service restaurants are also more labor intensive. That's a problem right now, as restaurant owners report having a hard time hiring staff.

Job openings in accommodation and food services rose by 409,000 in December, the largest increase by sector for the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in February.

Demand for workers marks a turnaround from early in the pandemic, when restaurants let go of millions of staffers. Some employees also left of their own volition during the pandemic, afraid of getting sick with Covid-19 or tired of dealing with grueling conditions and rude customers.


Today, some of those workers haven't returned, leaving operators struggling to restaff.

"Fundamentally, the labor situation is one where … there's just not enough supply of qualified workers," Henkes said. "And restaurants are particularly vulnerable, because it's never been the industry of choice for a lot of people."

Some restaurants, Henkes said, "are very cognizant that they need to improve the working experience and what they're offering to employees," he said. "But doing that at scale for an industry is very hard."

And, of course, some major employers are not interested in higher wages for workers.

Chipotle, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, McDonald's and KFC-owner Yum Brands, for example, have each donated $1 million to Save Local Restaurants, a coalition opposing a California law that could set minimum wage up to $22 an hour and codify working conditions for fast-food employees in the state.

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Stellantis invests $155 million in Argentine copper mine
por Reuters

Investing.com: Stock Market News / 2023-02-27 18:24



© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Stellantis, the world's fourth-largest automaker which starts trading in Milan and Paris after Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot maker PSA finalised their merger, is seen on a flag at the main entrance of FCA Mirafiori plant in Turin, Ital
ROME (Reuters) - Carmaker Stellantis said on Monday it had invested $155 million to buy a minority stake in a copper mine in Argentina as part of its global push to secure raw materials for electric vehicle batteries.

The company acquired a 14.2% stake in McEwen Copper, a subsidiary of Canada's McEwen Mining (NYSE:MUX), which owns the Los Azules project in Argentina.

The $155-million investment will make Stellantis the second-largest shareholder in McEwen Copper along with Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO), it said in a statement.

Los Azules plans to produce 100,000 tons per year of cathode copper, a key component for car batteries, at 99.9% purity starting in 2027, the carmaker said.

Stellantis, the world's third-largest automotive group by sales, includes Italy's Fiat and Alfa Romeo, France's Peugeot (OTC:PUGOY) and Citroen, and U.S brands Jeep and Ram.

The group wants 100% of its European passenger carsales and 50% of its U.S. passenger car and light-duty trucksales to be battery electric vehicles by 2030.

In recent months, Stellantis has struck a series of accords to procure raw materials for electric batteries, including last month's nickel sulphate supply deal with Finland's Terrafame.

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China's local state is on the verge of a debt crisis
The Economist: Finance and economics / 2023-02-27 18:28144
From several kilometres away China 117 Tower, the world's sixth-tallest skyscraper, is an extraordinary sight—rivalling anything Dubai, Hong Kong or New York has to offer. On closer inspection, however, the building in Tianjin is revealed to be an eyesore of epic proportions. Construction on "117", as locals call it, was never completed. Large sections remain unfinished; patches of the tower's concrete skeleton are exposed to the outside world. Instead of becoming a magnet for business and wealth, it has been repelling prosperity for years. Other derelict towers surround the building, forming a graveyard of a central business district. Local officials would hide the entire area if they could.

Tales of extravagantly wasteful spending have circulated in China for years, as cities and provinces accumulated debts to build infrastructure and boost the country's gdp. These debts have reached extraordinary levels—and the bill is now arriving. Borrowing often sits in local-government-financing vehicles (lgfvs), firms set up by officials to dodge rules which restrict their ability to borrow. These entities' outstanding bonds reached 13.6trn yuan ($2trn), or about 40% of China's corporate-bond market, at the end of last year. Lending through opaque, unofficial channels means, in reality, debts are much higher. An estimate in 2020 suggested a figure of nearly 50trn yuan.

Borrowing on this scale appeared unsustainable even during China's era of rapid growth. But disastrous policymaking has pushed local governments to the brink, and after the rush of reopening the long-term outlook for Chinese growth is lower. The country's zero-covid policy hurt consumption, cut factory output and forced cities and provinces to spend hundreds of billions of yuan on testing and quarantine facilities. Meanwhile, a property crisis last year led to a 50% fall in land sales, on which local governments rely for revenue. Although both problems are now easing—with zero-covid abandoned and property rules loosened—a disastrous chain of events may have been set in motion. About a third of local authorities are struggling to make payments on debts, according to a recent survey. The distress threatens government services, and is already provoking protests. Defaults could bring chaos to China's bond markets.

To make ends meet, local governments have entered costlier and murkier corners of the market. More than half of outstanding lgfv bonds are now unrated, the highest share since 2013, according to Michael Chang of cgs-cimb, a broker. Many lgfvs can no longer issue bonds in China's domestic market or refinance maturing ones. Payouts on bonds exceeded money brought in from new issuances in the final three months of 2022, for the first time in four years. To avoid defaults many are now looking to informal channels of borrowing—often referred to as "hidden debt" because it is difficult for auditors to work out just how much is owed. Interest on these debts is much higher and repayment terms shorter than those in the bond market. Other officials have gone offshore. lgfvs last year issued a record $39.5bn in dollar-denominated bonds, on which many are now paying coupons of more than 7%.


These higher rates have the makings of a crisis. A report by Allen Feng and Logan Wright of Rhodium, a research firm, estimates that 109 local governments out of 319 surveyed are struggling to pay interest on debts, let alone pay down principals. For this group of local authorities, interest accounts for at least 10% of spending, a dangerously high level. In Tianjin, the figure is 30%. The city, home to almost 14m people and on China's prosperous east coast, is a leading candidate to be the default that kicks off a market panic. Although Tianjin neighbours Beijing, its financial situation is akin to places in far-flung western and south-western provinces. At least 1.7m people have left the city since 2019, a scale of outflows that resembles those from rust-belt provinces. Dismal income from land sales can only cover about 20% of the city's short-term lgfv liabilities.

Across China, pressure on local budgets is starting to be felt. On February 23rd a private bus company in the city of Shangqiu, in Henan province, said it would suspend services owing to a lack of government financial support. Several others elsewhere have said the same. Cuts to health-care benefits have prompted protests in cities including Dalian and Wuhan, where they were met with a heavy police presence. Local governments have struggled to pay private firms for covid-related bills such as testing equipment. In places, they are also failing to pay migrant workers, which has led to more protests.

Some local governments have started to sell assets to try to avoid defaults. A recent loosening of rules on stock exchanges could help localities raise capital from the public through listings. Governments could also start hocking assets in private transactions. It is unclear, though, how far officials are willing to go, or who will buy the assets on offer. A new business district in Tianjin appears to have many of the hallmarks of success, for instance—not least several rows of sparkling new towers and a Porsche dealership across the street. But most of the shops on the ground floor of the project, which is jointly owned by a local-government company and a private firm, are empty. Local officials have started to auction off individual floors. One such sale recently ended without a buyer.

The central government is transferring funds to localities on a grander scale than ever before. More than 30trn yuan was made available between 2020 and 2022, according to Messrs Feng and Wright. An lgfv in the city of Zunyi, in the indebted south-western province of Guizhou, recently agreed with local banks to lower interest rates, defer principal payments for ten years and extend the maturity of its debt to 20 years. Such arrangements could become more common in future. Proponents argue that they indicate a genuine willingness on the part of local officials to pay their debts, and are an acknowledgement that it will simply take more time than expected.

But ever-growing debt over the past decade suggests that many projects will never become truly profitable, says Jack Yuan of Moody's, a ratings agency. The troubled lgfv in Zunyi, for instance, has had negative cash flows since 2016, and seems to have little hope of a turnaround. As Rhodium's analysts ask, if these governments could not make payments when local gdp growth was high, often over 7%, how will they manage in the forthcoming decade, with growth of perhaps 3%? ■

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The Role of Immigration in U.S. Labor Market Tightness
por Evgeniya A. Duzhak

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: FRBSF Economic Letter / 2023-02-27 18:3160


Immigration has traditionally provided an important contribution to the U.S. labor force. The flow of immigrants into the United States began to slow in 2017 due to various government policies, then declined further due to border closures in 2020–21 associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. This decline in immigration has had a notable effect on the share of immigrants in the U.S. labor force. For instance, Peri and Zaiour (2022) estimate that the pandemic led to 2 million fewer foreign working-age people in 2021 relative to the pre-2019 trend. More recent data from November 2022 show a significant pickup in immigration flows, narrowing this shortfall and returning numbers to the pre-pandemic level.

This Economic Letter explores the impact of recent changes to immigration flows on the labor market. I assess the labor market using the vacancy-to-unemployment (V–U) ratio, which is a well-known measure of the degree of labor market tightness, with a higher V–U ratio indicating a tighter labor market (Barnichon and Shapiro 2022). While gradual inflows of immigrants into the United States have historically tended to loosen labor markets, the sharp drop in immigration between 2017 and 2021 helped fuel a strong tightening in labor market conditions. I find that slowing immigration led to a 5.5 percentage point increase in the V–U ratio over this period. Data for 2022 show a strong rebound in immigration that has helped offset tight U.S. labor markets by contributing a 6 percentage point reduction in the V–U ratio.

Labor market tightness and its contributing factors
One way to measure the strength of the labor market is to compare the number of vacant positions employers would like to fill to the number of people looking for jobs. An elevated vacancy-to-unemployment (V–U) ratio indicates a tight labor market in which jobs are plentiful and unemployed workers are scarce.

The V–U ratio can vary for many reasons, such as overall economic activity or changes in technology that result in jobs being automated. In this Letter, I focus on the impact of the size of the labor force, that is, on the supply of workers. In particular, new entrants into the labor force can lower the V–U ratio by either filling open positions or joining the ranks of the unemployed looking for work.

A central force for expanding the labor force is a growing population. This occurs through either natural increases—more domestic births than deaths—or through more immigrants arriving than the number of people leaving the country. U.S. domestic-born population growth has slowed in recent years through low fertility rates and the aging of the baby-boom generation. Figure 1 shows the contributions to annual growth in the U.S. population from natural increases (blue bars) and net international migration (green bars). Net international migration (NIM) accounts for both immigration and emigration between the United States and the rest of the world.

Figure 1
Annual U.S. population change, 2015–22


Source: Author's calculations using national population projections from U.S. Census Bureau.

Recent population growth changed dramatically. Whereas the foreign-born population grew 1.6% per year on average in the decade leading up to 2017, growth slowed to 0.45% per year in 2018 and 2019 before coming to nearly a complete stop in 2020. NIM then picked up in 2021 before a substantial rebound in 2022.

Role of immigration in population and labor force growth
Immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy through the supply of labor as well as through entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs increase the demand for labor by creating job vacancies and therefore increasing labor tightness (Azoulay et al. 2022). However, the primary way recent entrants affect the U.S. labor market is by increasing labor supply, since they are more likely to work than demand labor services.

Much of the pre-COVID decline in immigration can be attributed to immigration policies enacted after January 2017. Over the course of four years, 472 executive actions were aimed at transforming the U.S. immigration system (Bolter, Israel, and Pierce 2022). These actions ranged broadly from increasing immigration enforcement to temporarily freezing refugee admissions and moving away from family immigration through the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act. Following these immigration policies, NIM fell significantly. Between 2016 and 2019 the number of new permanent residents dropped 13% and the number of student (F1) visas issued declined 23%. Nevertheless, these policies turned out to have a relatively modest impact compared with the border closures used as a pandemic mitigation strategy.

The overall impact of these policies and the pandemic can be seen by comparing the actual working-age foreign-born population and labor force with the level predicted by the average growth trend for 2010–16. Panel A of Figure 2 shows that the growth in the foreign-born working-age population slowed down such that, just before the pandemic, it was about 1.5 million people below what would have been predicted by its trend growth. This gap widened to 2 million people by the end of 2021, a shortfall noted by Peri and Zaiour (2022). Since then, however, immigration has rebounded, nearly closing the population gap with its pre-pandemic trend by the end of 2022.

Figure 2
Foreign-born worker contributions and pre-2017 trends


Source: Current Population Survey (CPS) and author's calculations. Series are calculated as monthly rates using CPS data, with the trends based on growth from January 2010 to December 2016.

To get a better understanding of how these changes have impacted the U.S. labor market, I also look at growth in the number of foreign-born individuals in the labor force, which measures people working or looking for work. I again assess the gap between the actual number of foreign-born individuals in the labor force relative to the level predicted by its 2010–16 trend. Panel B of Figure 2 shows that the overall pattern for the foreign-born labor force relative to its trend is broadly similar to that of the foreign-born working-age population, albeit with an even stronger recovery: the shortfall in the foreign-born labor force closed by the middle of 2022.

Connection between immigration and labor tightness
To explore the impact of immigration on labor markets, I examine variation in the V–U ratio and NIM across states. Most U.S. states have experienced a notable increase in the V–U ratio in recent years. As native-born worker migration rates across states have declined in recent decades (see Kerns-D'Amore, Marshall, and McKenzie 2022), foreign-born workers have been filling gaps in local labor markets. Furthermore, Cadena and Kovak (2016) show that low-skilled immigrants are more likely than native workers to travel to states with higher demand for labor. Similarly, one would expect that foreign-born workers would respond more than native workers to rising labor demand in states that typically attract more immigrants and have an above-average share of foreign-born population.

However, despite tightening labor markets and increased labor demand across the United States between 2017 and 2019, NIM was down in all but six states. In fact, most regions that gained immigrants have relatively low shares of foreign-born population. These states generally do not display a strong change in V–U ratios from changes in immigration flows because immigrants make up a smaller share of their local labor markets. In contrast, states with an above-average concentration of immigrants have a negative relationship between changes in NIM and the V–U ratio, such that the V–U ratio falls as the NIM rises. Therefore, states with a higher proportion of foreign-born workers typically experience stronger labor market tightening after a decline in NIM.

To more precisely estimate the effects of changes in NIM on labor market tightness, I use the differences in immigration rates across states and over time. I estimate the impact of changing NIM flows on labor tightness across states using the annual Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey and American Community Survey state data from 2006 to 2021. I measure changes in NIM relative to a state's resident population in 2000. Regression analysis indicates that higher NIM is associated with lower labor tightness. This highlights the effects of both decreasing immigration, where fewer foreign-born workers enter the labor market, and rising emigration of foreign-born workers out of state.

In addition, Figure 3 reports the average contribution of changes in NIM to the tightening in local labor markets. Positive values indicate that, on average, lower NIM increased labor market tightness. Prior to immigration policy changes beginning in 2017, NIM was increasing, thereby lowering the V–U ratio, albeit by a small amount. Slower immigration during 2017–20 contributed to an average increase in V–U. Pandemic-related policies led to an unprecedented drop in NIM at the same time as a sharp decrease in the V–U ratio when many businesses closed. As a result, declines in NIM in 2020 increased the V–U ratio about 5 percentage points, offsetting some of the reduction due to direct pandemic effects on the labor market. Subsequently, a strong immigration surge in 2022 led to an outsized increase in NIM. This helped alleviate some of the labor market tightness: according to regression estimates, the increase in NIM brought the V–U ratio down almost 6 percentage points, somewhat offsetting an overall increase in the ratio in 2022.

Figure 3
Net immigration contributions to changes in V-U ratio


Source: Author's calculations using data from Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau.

However, while variations in NIM impact labor market conditions, their average contributions to changes in the V–U ratio were relatively muted in most years. The exception is 2019, when the decline in NIM accounted for roughly a quarter of the small rise in the V–U ratio. 

Conclusion
Immigration policies enacted after January 2017 contributed to the decline in immigration prior to the sharp drop due to the COVID-19 border closures. Lower net international migration led to a slowdown in the foreign-born population and labor force growth. This contributed to the tightening in the U.S. labor market. Reopening of borders in 2022 and easing of immigration policies brought a sizable immigration rebound, which in turn helped alleviate the shortage of workers relative to job vacancies. The foreign-born labor force grew rapidly in 2022, closing the labor force gap created by the pandemic. This analysis suggests that, if the pickup in immigration flows continues, it could further ease overall labor market tightness, albeit by a modest amount.

Evgeniya A. Duzhak
Regional Policy Economist, Economic Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

References
Azoulay, Pierre, Benjamin F. Jones, J. Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda. 2022. "Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the United States." American Economic Review: Insights 4(1), pp. 71–88.

Barnichon, Regis, and Adam Shapiro. 2022. "What's the Best Measure of Economic Slack?" FRBSF Economic Letter 2022-04 (February 22).

Bolter, Jessica, Emma Israel, and Sarah Pierce. 2022. Four Years of Profound Change: Immigration Policy during the Trump Presidency. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute.

Cadena, Brian C., and Brian K. Kovak. 2016. "Immigrants Equilibrate Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the Great Recession." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 8(1), pp. 257–290.

Kristin Kerns-D'Amore, Joey Marshall, and Brian McKenzie. 2022. "Pandemic Did Not Disrupt Decline in Rate of People Moving." U.S. Census Bureau, America Counts: Stories Behind the Numbers, March 7.

Peri, Giovanni, and Reem Zaiour. 2022. "Labor Shortages and the Immigration Shortfall." EconoFact, January 11.

Opinions expressed in FRBSF Economic Letter do not necessarily reflect the views of the management of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. This publication is edited by Anita Todd and Karen Barnes. Permission to reprint must be obtained in writing.

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20 people who matter in UK tech
por Tom Bristow, Annabelle Dickson, Oscar Williams

POLITICO / 2023-02-26 20:027
LONDON — Who pulls the strings in U.K. tech policy has never been more important.

A raft of upcoming legislation aims to hold tech companies to account while encouraging investment and innovation. But that's a difficult balance to strike and critics fear new rules could hold back some of the U.K.'s most promising industries.

Britain has enjoyed a dominant role in European's tech sector for a decade. But investment in the U.K. fell by 22 percent last year, while rising in rival countries like France.

The sector has been hampered by political instability and uncertainty about what the country's long-term position will be on key areas such as AI, semiconductors, digital competition and content moderation. Meanwhile, the EU has pulled ahead — while the U.K. government keeps promising action "soon," EU lawmakers have already passed or are close to agreeing much of the regulation the U.K. has been talking about.

The people on POLITICO's power list can change that. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's decision to create a new Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) gives key industries a singular focus in government many felt had been missing, though questions remain about exactly what the department will be able to achieve.

Here's who to watch in Westminster in the coming months. We've split our list into rule-makers, enforcers, fighters, advocates, influencers and VCs.

Rule-makers
Michelle Donelan

As secretary of state at the shiny new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), Donelan has to be on the inaugural POLITICO U.K. tech power list. She has the potential to be a big player in the world of technology after she was tasked by Sunak with ensuring the U.K. is "the most innovative economy in the world and a science and technology superpower." No pressure. Keep a close eye on her ambitious deputy George Freeman though. It is no secret that he harbors ambitions to make his Cabinet debut.

For those wanting to get into the nitty gritty of some of the biggest tech-facing portfolios, Paul Scully, one of Donelan's ministerial team, will be the man to know having shepherded the Online Safety Bill through its latest House of Commons stages. All three might want to keep a close eye on veteran Tory MP Bill Cash, who deserves a special mention after making Britain's exit from the European Union his life's work, and now has Big Tech in his sights. And don't forget arch-Boris Johnson loyalist Nadine Dorries, who lost her power when the ex-prime minister was ousted from Downing Street, but has strong views on the direction of government policy, particularly on online safety.

Rishi Sunak

OK, an obvious one, but the list wouldn't be complete without him. The prime minister's creation of DSIT at the start of February showed how much he wants government to focus on tech. He is putting millions of taxpayers' pounds into startups, while at the same time giving regulators more power to rein in Big Tech.

The former hedge fund manager has long invested in startups (his investments are now held in a blind trust meaning neither he nor we can see them). He has polished his "tech bro" credentials and seems more comfortable meeting tech billionaires like Bill Gates and answering questions from a chatbot than functioning in the real world of petrol stations, supermarkets and schools. But the extent to which Sunak can deliver his dream of transforming the U.K. into an innovation superpower depends on his political acumen, which will come under intense pressure as the next election approaches.

Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images
Beeban Kidron

Filmmaker-turned-peer Kidron has made her seat in the House of Lords count. Few peers (or indeed MPs) have had quite as big an impact on tech legislation as Kidron, most notably her push for the Digital Economy Act to include an Age Appropriate Design Code, a set of rules that apply to any search engine, social media platform or online marketplace with users in the country. Kidron now has changes to the Online Safety Bill in her sights. Elsewhere in parliament's unelected upper chamber, Tim Clement-Jones is a thoughtful voice on regulating artificial intelligence, and Tina Stowell now chairs the Lords' communications and digital committee — a key vehicle for scrutinizing the tech companies.

Darren Jones

Jones is Labour's go-to on tech policy. As chairman of parliament's business select committee, he made a splash with inquiries into the government's semiconductor strategy (or lack of) and probed plans for the U.K.'s post-Brexit competition policy. A future Labour government would surely call on his expertise. On the Labour frontbench, Alex Davies-Jones, who has the digital brief, is clearly worth knowing too. If the polls stay as they are, she could well be a tech minister before too long. Lucy Powell, as shadow culture secretary since 2021, has been the Labour voice on the Online Safety Bill. Behind the scenes look out for Tom Adeyoola who is playing a role in Labour's startup review.

Susannah Storey

Storey was the first top civil servant to be announced at DSIT. Having moved across from what was then the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), where she had been director general (DG) for digital and media policy, she now has the DG brief for digital, tech and telecoms. Much of her work will focus on helping to deliver big pieces of legislation including the Digital Markets Competition and Consumer Bill. The department also needs to get the Online Safety Bill over the line.

A regular on panel Q&As, Storey gave an insight into some of her policy thinking to the Open Data Institute in 2021. She said this was the key decade for making tech policy in the U.K. — but time is running out and she is keeping her eye on what other countries are doing. Before joining the civil service, she worked at Citigroup and Schroders in mergers and acquisitions. The other key player in the department is Permanent Secretary Sarah Munby, who moved across from BEIS.

Chief Technology Adviser … Sunak on the hunt

There are plans afoot to recruit a powerful new adviser in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. A new "chief technology adviser" would be tasked with working with the rest of the civil service to deliver the PM's science and tech vision, according to a Whitehall official.

Over in No. 10 Downing Street, Jean-Andre Prager is the well-regarded and long-serving special adviser who oversees DCMS in the No. 10 Downing Street policy unit, but with the work and pensions brief in his portfolio too. In a sign of just how important No. 10 sees DSIT, a well-placed official said, they are potentially on the hunt for a new tech point person at the heart of government. Don't expect the hire to be someone steeped in politics. "[Tech] isn't that political," the official said.

Over in the Treasury, Adam Memon, Hunt's economic adviser, is seen as an ally in tech land. A short stint on the digital markets unit at the Competition and Markets Authority has given him a valuable understanding of the subject. On the official side the Treasury's director of growth Joanna Key is seen a key player for industry.

Enforcers
Amy Jordan

The director of technology policy at Ofcom has a busy couple of years ahead as the regulator works out how to implement the mammoth Online Safety Bill. The timeline for this has already been moved several times, but Ofcom's latest estimates suggest it will take around two years from the bill becoming law to fully implement the new regulatory regime.

Jordan, an Oxford languages graduate, will be a key part of that work. She has spent most of her career in the civil service, firstly on the fast-track scheme, then working on cybersecurity at the World Economic Forum, before joining Ofcom almost three years ago. In a recent Q&A organized by techUK, she acknowledged the scale of the task Ofcom faces to get the bill working in the real world. The other key name in Ofcom is director for online harms, Richard Wronka. Also watch for Gill Whitehead from April, then she joins as group director of online safety. The former Google executive joins from the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum where she is CEO.

Jacqui Ward

Chinese ownership of U.K. tech is one of the hottest political topics right now, and as director of Britain's Investment Security Unit, Ward has been tasked with screening and thwarting takeovers which could harm national security. Her unit has just moved into the powerful Cabinet Office after BEIS was broken up. It is just over a year since the National Security and Investment Act came into force and how its powers might be used remains a live issue for industry. While Ward will work behind the scenes, it is National Security Adviser Tim Barrow (remember him?) and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Dowden, who will be the public faces of potentially contentious decisions about whether takeovers should be blocked.

Sarah Cardell

The head of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has only been in the post for a few months but is already making waves. "Major U.S. tech investors are impressed by Cardell," one industry lobbyist said. "They think she's very smart and wants to make a real impact. They're treading cautiously around tech deals requiring U.K. approval in a way they weren't before."

The Oxford graduate, who like so many in Westminster studied philosophy, politics and economics, has been at the CMA since 2013 and was previously its general counsel. The CMS is has an open investigation running into Google's ad tech and a high-profile case on Microsoft's planned takeover of Activision Blizzard. The CMA is also beefing up its digital markets unit ahead of the Digital Markets Competition and Consumer Bill which will give it new powers.

The fighters
Nick Clegg

Clegg was already a member of Mark Zuckerberg's inner circle before he was promoted last year, but in his new role as Meta's president of global affairs, he is officially as senior as the Facebook founder himself.

Having returned to London last summer, Clegg has a slate of chunky legislative briefs to get stuck into on this side of the Atlantic. His teams will closely monitor the progress of online safety and competition and data protection bills through the U.K. parliament, while gearing up for the Digital Services and Markets Acts in the EU. Clegg's promotion reflects just how significant lobbying has become to Meta, which is facing intense competition from Chinese-owned TikTok as well as investor jitters over its $36bn metaverse bet.

Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
Dom Hallas

As head of the startup trade body Coadec, Hallas is one of the best-connected people in U.K. tech. He attracted both Sunak and former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to Coadec events and September's budget included several investor-friendly policy reforms first championed by his team.

But a more recent Treasury intervention has ruffled feathers. Coadec is resisting Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's plans to curb R&D tax cuts. Founders surveyed by the organization in January said the proposals were incentivizing them to speed up overseas expansion plans. The startup association isn't alone in pushing back on the proposals. The Federation of Small Businesses has warned the U.K. will become an "innovation wasteland" if Hunt follows through with the plans. This battle is likely to rage for some time and Hallas is unlikely to back down until he's secured a deal that will satisfy his members.

Neil Ross

Ross is responsible for shaping trade association techUK's approach to new regulation. A former researcher to two Labour MPs, Ross rapidly ascended the trade body's ranks since joining in 2019. Now associate director, he is tasked with finding coherent positions that represent techUK's diverse membership, from the Big Tech firms and software vendors to startups and telecoms operators. That's easier said than done, but when techUK speaks as the voice of the industry, ministers listen.

The protagonists
Poppy Wood

Reset.Tech has quickly but quietly become one of the most influential advocacy groups in the U.K. Launched in 2020 and funded by the Sadler and Omidyar foundations, Reset's British-wing is led by Poppy Wood, a former adviser to David Cameron turned tech policy pro. Wood's mission is to provide a counterweight to the Big Tech lobby and she has built networks connecting MPs and peers to whistle-blowers and former employees of the tech giants.

Wood's primary weapon is the all-party parliamentary group on digital regulation, which Reset manages. The APPG includes many MPs and peers who have brought forward amendments strengthening the Online Safety Bill in recent months. Wood is also expected to keep a close eye on the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill and data protection reforms once they arrive in parliament.

Cori Crider

This Texan human rights lawyer first made a name for herself in Whitehall shining a light on the government's work with Palantir during the pandemic. But Foxglove, the advocacy group she runs, has since broadened its focus. Crider's team is fighting Facebook over its treatment of content moderators in Kenya and wants to challenge the government's use of algorithms in benefit fraud investigations. Crider's also planning a parliamentary engagement campaign linked to the new £360m NHS data platform deal Palantir is looking to secure. Sympathetic MPs can expect to hear from her team soon.

Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images
Influencers
Ashleigh Ainsley

We're very conscious of the lack of diversity on this list which makes organizations like Colour in Tech even more important. Ashleigh Ainsley, one of its co-founders, can point to some very impressive achievements since launching in 2016. More than 5,000 people have passed through its programs and the non-profit has been backed by the likes of Google, DeepMind, Meta and Microsoft. There's plenty still to do, though — BAME employees represent 15 percent of tech workers in the U.K. against 20 percent of the population.

Gerard Grech

Tech Nation, the organization Grech has led for almost a decade, is closing its doors at the end of March, but its CEO remains a powerful voice in tech. He sits on a DCMS advisory board and has plenty of success getting people to sit up and listen.

The former record company founder built his career in telecoms at Orange in the noughties before being invited by David Cameron to become the founder and CEO of Tech City UK, as it was then, in 2014. The outpouring of support for Tech Nation after it announced its closure has been striking. The organization helped a third of all U.K. tech companies which have scaled and helped thousands of workers through its visa scheme, so watch out for what Grech says and does next.

Gerard Grech (right) | Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Advertising Week Europe
The money
Nathan Benaich

As founder of Air Street Captial, a small-scale venture capital fund, Benaich is by no means a heavy hitter when it comes to writing checks for startups. But when it comes to politics, he bats above his average. The Cambridge Ph.D grad was on the panel of Labour's recent start-up report; he got name-checked as a reviewer in the recent U.K.'s digital manifesto published by Tony Blair and William Hague; and participated in an off-the-record discussion on Labour's tech strategy in late January between Labour-favoring techies.

Eileen Burbidge

Few VCs successfully straddle the worlds of politics and investment, but Burbidge is one of them. The London-based American founded Passion Captial in 2011 which has backed around 100 early-stage startups, including Monzo. She was awarded an MBE in 2015, is the Treasury's FinTech envoy and was part of David Cameron's Business Advisory Group. Her latest venture is Fertifa, a reproductive health company.

John Phillips/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Saul Klein

Another VC who has been close to government, Klein co-founded Lovefilm — the British version of Netfix — and his current outfits Zinc and LocalGlobe plow money into early stage start-ups. He focuses his investments local to the U.K. and northern Europe. After spending time in California, Klein has become a leading sounding board for repeated governments on what to do about tech and is a cheerleader for how the country (but mostly London) is one of the largest tech ecosystem in the world. He's currently a member of No. 10's Council for Science and Technology after previously being appointed as "Tech Envoy" to Israel under David Cameron's administration and serving as a advisor board member at DCMS. "Government can support this or not support that, but the waves (of technological change) are so much bigger," he told POLITICO.

Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Ilan Gur

With a budget of £800 million to invest in U.K. innovation, look out for the first chief executive of the new Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). The American is leading the U.K.'s answer to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which spawned several groundbreaking technologies. It is one of the most high-profile of former Downing Street top adviser Dominic Cummings' surviving policies. Gur worked at the U.S. Department of Energy's agency for funding innovations, ARPA-E, for three years as a senior adviser so has experience investing public money in emerging tech.

"Aria itself it's a bold bet. The agency is really a grand experiment," he said in a documentary in February. It has been given a lot of public money to "bet on science" so will need to prove its worth fast — but that might be tricky, as its bets probably won't materialize for a decade, so Gur will need to manage government expectations.

Enviado do meu Galaxy

High Gas Prices Could Be The New Normal For Europe
por Irina Slav

Oilprice.com / 2023-02-26 20:0551


Last summer, in August, gas prices on the European market topped 340 euros per megawatt-hour.
China's demand for LNG is expected to rebound this year, intensifying competition for limited supply.
Despite relatively high storage levels, Europe is increasingly reliant on LNG spot markets.
In the winter of late 2022 and early 2023, Europe got lucky. It got very lucky. Gas storage sites were fuller than usual because of the massive LNG-buying effort the EU put into securing gas for the winter, and the winter itself turned out to be warmer than usual.

Yet luck, while a big part of Europe's success in making it through winter relatively unscathed despite decimated Russian gas supply, was not all of it. Europe made it because it had the money to pay such prices for LNG on the spot market, which made the fuel impossible to afford for many other countries, notably Pakistan and Bangladesh. And now it has to do it all over again.

"We do not expect filling storage to be as costly next summer as it was this past year," Aurora Energy Research senior analyst Jacob Mandel told Reuters this week. "That said, firms that rely on spot supply to fill storage, rather than hedge against future price jumps, will risk paying similar costs to last summer," he added.

Last summer, in August, gas prices on the European market topped 340 euros per megawatt-hour, which is more than $360. To prevent a repeat of this, the European Union approved a price cap mechanism that is triggered when the price of gas tops 180 euros per MWh, or $190.

The bloc also plans to buy gas jointly on the global market in a bid to ensure member states do not become competitors and that richer ones do not fill their storage sites at the expense of poorer ones.

But none of this would be enough in the face of fundamental factors. China's demand for LNG is expected to rebound this year, intensifying competition for limited supply. According to Energy Intelligence analysts, China's LNG demand will rise by 3 million tons in 2023, yet Europe will remain the prime destination for LNG globally. Because it has no choice.

Related: Three Fires At Pemex Facilities In One Day

"For this winter it is right to say that we are off the hook. If there are no last minute surprises, we should get through...maybe with some bruises here and there. But the question is...what happens next winter?"

The question comes from the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, who talked to Reuters on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference earlier this month. And that's not the first time Birol has warned again of premature calm in Europe.

"Even though we have enough LNG import terminals, there may not be enough gas to import and therefore it will not be easy this coming winter for Europe," Birol said, echoing earlier comments that Europe faces a deep supply gap with the disappearance of Russian pipeline flows via the now defunct Nord Stream infrastructure.

That gap was estimated at 30 billion cubic meters by the International Energy Agency. According to its head, this year will see 23 billion cu m in additional supply. China is returning to business as usual, which means higher gas demand, while in the United States, gas drillers are reducing output because U.S. gas prices are near record lows.

The European political leaders could take solace in the fact that there is plenty of gas in storage left from last winter, but that can't be much of a consolation because the governments that paid for that gas made a loss on it. They made a loss because they didn't hedge future sales, and they didn't hedge probably because they expected the gas to be used during the winter.

On top of all this, as several market analysts, notably Reuters' John Kemp, have observed, the EU's gas storage does not cover 100 percent of consumption. In fact, taken together, the total storage capacity in the bloc covers about a quarter of total gas demand.

Besides, gas storage capacity is distributed unevenly among member states, so while some countries could satisfy close to 100 percent of their demand for gas from storage, Germany, for instance, cannot. So it's building LNG import terminals.

Argus reported this week that Germany plans to become the world's fourth-largest LNG importer by 2030, with a capacity of close to 71 million tons. That's the same Germany that refused to sign long-term LNG supply deals with Qatar because of its energy transition plans. Yet it may soon become the largest LNG importer after China, Japan, and South Korea. 

Those 70.7 million tons of liquefied gas would need to come from somewhere, and it will, from Qatar and the United States but mostly from the latter, whose producers are more flexible than QatarEnergy and gladly sell their LNG on the spot market—at respectively higher prices.

What all the latest developments in Europe's natural gas space suggest is that the EU will continue paying much higher prices for the gas it consumes than it used to before 2022. Governments will probably continue to shield the most vulnerable groups with state funds. That's a lot of additional expenses that weren't necessary just two years ago—and a persistent inflation driver for European economies.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

Enviado do meu Galaxy

How the titans of tech investing are staying warm over the VC winter
Economist/Business & Finance / 2023-02-26 22:00

Business | VCetacean evolution
Venture capital's bruised whales are rethinking their strategies
Feb 26th 2023 | SAN FRANCISCO
Venture capitalists are not known for their humility. But the world's biggest investors in innovation have been striking a more humble tone of late. In a recent letter to investors Tiger Global, a hedge fund turned venture-capital (VC) investor, reportedly admitted that it had "underestimated" inflation and "overestimated" the boost the pandemic would give to the tech startups in its portfolio. In November Sequoia, a Silicon Valley VC blue blood, apologised to investors in its funds after the spectacular blow-up of FTX, a now defunct crypto-trading platform that it had backed. Speaking in January, Jeffrey Pichet Jaensubhakij, the chief investment officer of GIC, one of Singapore's sovereign-wealth funds, said that he was "thinking much more soberly" about startup investing.


The VC giants' newfound contrition comes on the back of a gigantic tech crash. The tech-heavy NASDAQ index fell by a third in 2022, making it one of the worst years on record and drawing comparisons with the dotcom bust of 2000-01. According to the Silicon Valley Bank, a tech-focused lender, between the fourth quarters of 2021 and 2022, the average value of recently listed tech stocks in America dropped by 63%. And the plunging public valuations dragged down private ones (see chart 1). The value of older, larger private firms ("late-stage" in the lingo) fell by 56% after funds marked down their assets or the firms raised new capital at lower valuations.


This has, predictably, had a chilling effect on the business of investing in startups. Soaring inflation and rising interest rates made companies whose promised profits lie primarily in the distant future look less attractive today. Scandals like FTX did not help. After a decade-long bull run, the amount of money flowing into startups globally declined by a third in 2022, calculates CB Insights, a data provider (see chart 2). In the final three months of 2022 it fell to $66bn, two-thirds lower than a year earlier; the number of mega-rounds, in which startups raise more than $100m, fell by 71%. Unicorns, the supposedly uncommon private firms valued at more than $1bn, became rarer again: the number of new ones contracted by 86%.

This turmoil is forcing the biggest venture investors—call them the VC whales—to shift their strategies. For Silicon Valley, it signals a reversion to a forgotten style of venture capitalism, with fewer deep-pocketed tourists splashing the cash and more bets on young companies by Silicon Valley stalwarts.

Misadventure capital
To understand the scale of VC's reversal of fortune, consider its earlier bonanza. Between 2012 and 2021 annual global investments grew roughly ten-fold, to $638bn. Conventional VC firms faced competition from a new breed of investor from beyond Silicon Valley. These included hedge funds, the venture arms of multinational companies, from Shell to Samsung, and the world's sovereign-wealth funds, some of which began investing in startups directly. Dealmaking turned frenetic. In 2021 Tiger Global inked almost one new deal a day. Across VC-dom activity "was a bit unhinged", says Roelof Botha, boss of Sequoia Capital, "but rational", given that low interest rates meant that money was virtually free. And "if you weren't doing it, your competitor was."

What passed for rationality in the boom times now looks somewhat insane. The downturn has spooked the VC funds' main sources of capital—their limited partners (LPs). This group, which includes everyone from family offices and university endowments to industrial firms and pension funds, is growing more nervous. And stingier: lower returns from their current investments leaves LPs with less capital to redeploy, and collapsing stockmarkets have left many of them overallocated to private firms, whose valuations take longer to adjust and whose share of some LPs' portfolios thus suddenly exceeds their quotas. Preqin, a data firm, finds that in the last quarter of 2022 new money flowing into VC funds fell to $21bn, its lowest level since 2015.

What new VC funding there is increasingly flows into mega-funds. Data from PitchBook, a research firm, show that in America in 2022 funds worth more than $1bn accounted for 57% of all capital, up from 20% in 2018. How the VC whales behind these outsize pools of capital adapt to the VC winter will determine the shape of the industry in the years to come.

The venture cetaceans can be divided into three big subspecies, each typified by big-name investors. The startups they finance range from the newly founded in need of "seed" funding, to the somewhat older, later stage firms that are looking to rapidly grow. First there is the conventional Silicon Valley royalty, such as Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. The second group comprises the private tourists, such as Tiger and its New York hedge-fund rival, Coatue, as well as SoftBank, a gung-ho Japanese investment house. Then there are the sovereign-wealth funds, such as Singapore's GIC and Temasek, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Mubadala of the United Arab Emirates. As well as investing directly, these entities are LPs in other VC funds; PIF, for example, is a large backer of SoftBank's Vision Fund.

Together these nine institutions ploughed more than $200bn into startups in 2021 alone, or roughly a third of the global total (not counting the state funds' indirect investments as LPs). All nine have been badly damaged by last year's crash. Sequoia's crossover fund, which invested in both public and private firms, reportedly lost two-fifths of its value in 2022. Temasek's listed holdings on American exchanges shrank by about the same. SoftBank's mammoth Vision Funds, which together raised around $150bn, lost more than $60bn, wiping out their previous gains. In a sign that things were terrible, its typically garrulous boss, Son Masayoshi, sat out its latest earnings call on February 7th. Tiger reportedly lost over half of the value of its flagship hedge fund and marked down its private investments by about a quarter, torching $42bn in value and leading one VC grandee to speculate that the hedge fund might turn itself into a family office.

All three groups have reined in their investments. But each has responded to the downturn in distinct ways. That is in part because it has affected them to different degrees.

The private outsiders have been hardest hit. The combined number of startup investments by the three firms in our sample fell by 76% between the second half of 2021 and the same period in 2022. Tiger has lowered the target for its latest fund from $6bn to $5bn; its previous one raised $13bn. In October Phillipe Laffont, Coatue's boss, said that the hedge fund was holding 70-80% of its assets in cash. The firm has also raised $2bn for its "tactical solutions fund", designed to give mature startups access to debt and other resources, as an alternative to raising equity at diminished valuations during a market downturn. SoftBank has all but stopped investing in new startups. Instead, in the second half of 2022 most of its capital went to well-performing portfolio firms, says Lydia Jett, a partner at the Vision Fund.

The other two groups are also retrenching, but not as drastically. According to data from PitchBook, in the second half of 2022 the number of deals struck by Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz fell by a combined 47%. Direct investments by the four sovereign funds in our sample slowed by a more modest 31% in the same period, no doubt thanks to their governments' deep pockets and longer time horizons.

Taken together, venture capitalists' slowing pace of investment has left them with a record amount of capital that LPs had already pledged to stump up but that has yet to be put to use. Last year the amount of this "dry powder" was just shy of $300bn in America alone (see chart 3). According to data from PitchBook, our five private whales are sitting on a combined $50bn or so; the sovereign investors hold their numbers close to their chest but are likely to be of a similar order of magnitude, all told. Some of it may wait a long while to be deployed, if it ever is. But some will find grateful recipients. Who those recipients are also depends on which group of whales you look at.


Conventional VCs and the hedge funds are focusing on younger "early-stage" firms. in part because volatility in the public markets makes it harder to value more mature companies that hope to list in the near future. Mr Botha says that Sequoia has doubled the number of "seed" deals with the youngest companies in 2022, compared with 2021. In January the firm launched its fifth seed fund, worth $195m. Last April Andreessen Horowitz launched an "accelerator" programme to nurture startups. About half the startups Tiger backed in 2022 were worth $50m or less, compared with just a fifth in 2021, according to PitchBook.

Early-stage firms are unlikely to be the only recipient of VC cash. David DiPietro, head of private equity at T. Rowe Price, a fund-management group, thinks that startups selling "must-have" products, such as cyber-security services, or cost-cutting tools, such as budgeting software, should fare well. Money will also keep flowing to well-managed businesses with strong balance-sheets., expects Kelly Rodriques, chief executive of Forge, a marketplace for private securities. Firms with buzzy new technologies, such as artificial-intelligence chatbots and other forms of whizzy "generative AI", are also likely to attract investments—especially if those technologies already work in practice and underpin a viable business model.

Another category of startups likely to gain favour comprises those involved in industries that governments deem strategic. In America, that means climate-friendly technology and advanced manufacturing, on which Uncle Sam is showering subsidies and government contracts. Some 8% of the deals all our whales made in the second half of 2022 involved firms working on technologies to combat climate change, for example, up from 2% in the same period of 2021. Last year Andreessen Horowitz launched an "American Dynamism" fund, which partly invests in firms that rely on government procurement, such as Anduril, a defence-tech startup.

Sovereign-wealth funds are likely to be looking elsewhere. Seed deals are simply too small for them: whereas the typical early-stage American company is worth about $50m, in 2021 the median value of startups backed by the sovereign funds was a whopping $650m. And to them, what counts as "must-have" startups is somewhat different, determined less by the market or other states' strategic imperatives, and more by their own governments' nation-building plans.

On February 16th PIF said it would take a stake in VSPO, a Chinese platform for video-game tournaments. This is part of a plan dreamed up by Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, to invest $38bn in "e-sports" by 2030 and make Saudi Arabia a gamer's mecca. Temasek invests heavily in firms that develop technology to boost food production. In the past year it backed Upside Foods, a startup selling lab-grown meat, and InnovaFeed, a maker of insect-based protein. This is motivated by Singapore's goal of locally producing 30% of the city-state's nutritional needs by 2030, up from about 10% in 2020. Rohit Sipahimalani, chief investment officer of Temasek, thinks that over the next few years his focus will shift towards "breakthrough innovation rather than incremental innovation", on the back of government support of strategic tech.

One group of firms is likely to see less investment from our whales, however: those in China. The Communist Party's harsh two-year crackdown on consumer technology may be easing but the VC titans remain wary of what was until recently one of the world's hottest startup scenes. An executive at a big venture fund says that in the past, foreign investors in China knew that the government would be respectful of their capital. Now, he sighs, it feels like the government "has pulled the rug out from underneath us".

Tiger has said that there is a "high bar" for new investments in China. GIC has reportedly scaled back its investments in China-focused private funds. Mr Sipahimalani of Temasek says diplomatically that he is trying to avoid investing in "areas caught in the cross-hairs of US-China tension". Sequoia is reportedly asking external experts to screen new investments made by its Chinese arm into quantum computing and semiconductors, two such contentious areas. All told, the number of our whales' deals with Chinese startups fell from 22% of the total in 2021 to 16% in 2022.

After the dotcom crunch VC investments needed nearly two decades to return to their previous peak. Today's tech industry is more mature, startups' balance-sheets are stronger and, according to the Silicon Valley Bank, their peak valuations relative to sales are lower than in 2000-01. This time the whales of VC are unlikely to need 20 years to nurse their wounds. But the experience will have lasting effects on the sort of businesses they back. ■

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Enviado do meu Galaxy

Global firms are eyeing Asian alternatives to Chinese manufacturing
Economist/Business & Finance / 2023-02-20 20:47

Business | The Altasian option
Can "Altasia" steal China's thunder?
Feb 20th 2023 | Singapore
IN 1987 PANASONIC made an adventurous bet on China. At the time the electronics giant's home country, Japan, was a global manufacturing powerhouse and the Chinese economy was no larger than Canada's. So when the company entered a Chinese joint venture to make cathode-ray tubes for its televisions in Beijing, eyebrows were raised. Before long other titans of consumer electronics, from Japan and elsewhere, were also piling into China to take advantage of its abundant and cheap labour. Three-and-a-half decades on, China is the linchpin of the multitrillion-dollar consumer-electronics industry. Its exports of electronic goods and components amounted to $1trn in 2021, out of a global total of $3.3trn. These days, it takes a brave firm to avoid China.

Increasingly, however, under a weighty combination of commercial and political pressure, foreign companies are beginning to pluck up the courage if not to leave China entirely, then at least to look beyond it for growth. Chinese labour is no longer that cheap: between 2013 and 2022 manufacturing wages doubled, to an average of $8.27 per hour. More important, the deepening techno-decoupling between Beijing and Washington is forcing manufacturers of high-tech products, especially those involving advanced semiconductors, to reconsider their reliance on China.

Between 2020 and 2022 the number of Japanese companies operating in China fell from around 13,600 to 12,700, according to Teikoku Databank, a research firm. On January 29th it was reported that Sony plans to move production of cameras sold in Japan and the West from China to Thailand. Samsung, a South Korean firm, has slashed its Chinese workforce by more than two-thirds since a peak in 2013. Dell, an American computer-maker, is reportedly aiming to stop using Chinese-made chips by 2024.

The question for Dell, Samsung, Sony and their peers is: where to make stuff instead? No single country offers China's vast manufacturing base. Yet taken together, a patchwork of economies across Asia presents a formidable alternative. It stretches in a crescent from Hokkaido, in northern Japan, through South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh, all the way to Gujarat, in north-western India. Its members have distinct strengths, from Japan's high skills and deep pockets to India's low wages. On paper, this is an opportunity for a useful division of labour, with some countries making sophisticated components and others assembling them into finished gadgets. Whether it can work in practice is a big test of the nascent geopolitical order.


This alternative Asian supply chain—call it Altasia—looks evenly matched with China in heft, or better (see chart). Its collective working-age population of 1.4bn dwarfs even China's 980m. Altasia is home to 154m people aged between 25 and 54 with a tertiary education, compared with 145m in China—and, in contrast to ageing China, their ranks look poised to expand. In many parts of Altasia wages are considerably lower than in China: hourly manufacturing wages in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are below $3, around one-third of what Chinese workers now demand. And the region is already an exporting power: its members sold $634bn-worth of merchandise to America in the 12 months to September 2022, edging out China's $614bn.


Altasia has also become more economically integrated. All of it bar India, Bangladesh and Taiwan has, helpfully, signed on to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP, which also includes China). By harmonising the rules of origin across the region's sundry existing trade deals, the pact has created a single market in intermediate products. That in turn has eased regulatory barriers to complex supply chains that run through multiple countries. Most Altasian countries are members of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a newish American initiative. Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam belong to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which also includes Canada, Mexico and several South American countries.

A model for the Altasian economy already exists, courtesy of Japanese companies, which have been building supply chains in South-East Asia for decades. More recently Japan's rich Altasian neighbour, South Korea, has followed its example. In 2020 South Korean firms' total stock of direct investments in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam—which together with unstable Myanmar make up the Association of South-East-Asian Nations (ASEAN)—and Bangladesh reached $96bn, narrowly outstripping Korean investments in China. As recently as a decade ago the stock of Korean companies' investments in China was nearly twice as large as in Altasia. Samsung is the biggest foreign investor in Vietnam. Last year Hyundai, a South Korean carmaker, opened its first ASEAN factory, making electric vehicles in Indonesia.

Now more non-Altasian firms are eyeing the region, often via their Taiwanese contract manufacturers. Taiwan's Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron, which assemble gadgets for Apple, among others, are investing heavily in Indian factories. The share of iPhones made in India is expected to rise from around one in 20 last year to perhaps one in four by 2025. Two Taiwanese universities have teamed up with Tata, an Indian conglomerate with ambitious plans in high-tech manufacturing, to offer courses in electronics to Indian workers. Google is shifting the outsourced production of its newest Pixel smartphones from China to Vietnam.

More sophisticated manufacturing, especially of geopolitically fraught semiconductors, is also moving to Altasia. Malaysia already exports around 10% of the world's chips by value, more than America. ASEAN countries account for more than a quarter of global exports of integrated circuits, easily surpassing China's 18%. And that gap is growing. Qualcomm, an American "fabless" chipmaker, which sells microprocessor designs for others to manufacture, opened its first research-and-development centre in Vietnam in 2020. Qualcomm's revenues from Vietnamese chip factories, many of which belong to global giants like Samsung, tripled between 2020 and 2022. Earlier this month the local government of Ho Chi Minh City announced that it was courting a $3.3bn investment from Intel (though it later struck the American chip giant's name from the statement online).

China's huge advantage has historically been its vast single market, knit together with decent infrastructure, where value could be added without suppliers, workers and capital crossing national borders. For Altasia to truly rival China, therefore, its supply chain will need to become far more integrated and efficient. Although RCEP has greased the wheels of intra-Altasian commerce somewhat, the flow of goods faces more obstacles than it does within China. Its member countries will need to play to their comparative advantage.

For now the infrastructure that connects them is shabby, at best. Finicky regulations and national ambitions can easily gum up the alternative supply chain. Altasia's poorer countries are also not necessarily keen on the logical division of labour, which would see them with a bigger role in the more menial parts of the electronics supply chain. And forgoing all Chinese-made parts is next to impossible. Thamlev, an American electric-bike startup, moved production from China to Malaysia in 2022 in order to avoid a 25% American tariff, but still needed to import Chinese components. As a result, it took a month longer for its e-bikes to reach American riders.

Prospects for deeper integration are hazy, both within Altasia and with big consumer markets in the rich world. India, on whose 1.4bn people Altasia's future may depend, seems in no rush to become part of RCEP. Although the country has, with other Altasian neighbours, signed up to America's Indo-Pacific framework, it has opted out of the initiative's trade provisions. And these anyway lack bite: America is in a protectionist mood and has offered no tariff cuts or better access to its vast market. One ASEAN policymaker likens it to a doughnut, lacking substance in the middle.

Altasia will certainly not replace China soon, let alone overnight. In January, for example, Panasonic announced a big expansion of its Chinese operations. But in time China is likely to become less attractive to foreign manufacturers. Chinese labour is not getting any cheaper and its graduates are not getting much more numerous. America may yet realise that reducing its reliance on China in practice requires closer ties with friendly countries, including membership of the CPTPP, the precursor of which collapsed after America pulled out in 2017. And as a budding alternative to China, Altasia has no equal. ■

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76% of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Value Is in These 5 Stocks
por newsfeedback@fool.com (Keith Noonan)

The Motley Fool / 2023-02-19 12:588


Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.A 0.02%) (BRK.B 0.02%) Warren Buffett has said: "Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing." While having a meaningful degree of portfolio diversification is likely a smart move for most investors, it's clear Buffett is enormously confident in the Berkshire managers' and analyst teams' abilities to pick winners.

Given that Berkshire has absolutely crushed the market since Buffett became the company's leader in 1965, it would be nearly impossible to argue that his confidence is misplaced. Read on for a look at Berkshire Hathaway's five largest stock holdings (based on the company's recent 13F filing), which accounted for roughly 76% of its direct equity ownership positions.


Image source: The Motley Fool.

1. Apple 
Apple (AAPL -0.76%) stands as, by far, the largest holding in the Berkshire Hathaway stock portfolio. At current prices, the tech giant's stock accounts for roughly 38.9% of the investment conglomerate's equity holdings. Buffett's company began investing in the iPhone maker back in 2016, and the combination of capital appreciation for existing shares in the portfolio and additional stock purchases elevated it to Berkshire's top equity position.

Apple's dominance in the mobile market has made it one of the world's most profitable businesses. According to analysis from Counterpoint Research, the iPhone company generated 85% of global profits on smartphone sales in last year's fourth quarter. If you think about how many device manufacturers are out there and how competition and commodification trends, Apple's dominance in mobile is nothing short of incredible -- and it doesn't look like the tech leader will be ceding dominance in the space any time soon.

2. Bank of America
Early in 2011, it looked like Buffett might have been done with Bank of America (BAC 0.20%) stock for good. The publication of Berkshire's 13F filing for 2010's fourth quarter revealed that Berkshire had sold off the entirety of its position in the bank stock and taken a substantial loss exiting the position. But the investment conglomerate was back to buying BoA shares before 2011 was over.

With BoA facing pressures from the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis and lingering pressures from the recent financial crash and recession, Buffett proposed a deal to BoA that would provide the struggling financial giant with an injection of new capital. Berkshire bought $5 billion worth of preferred stock and received stock warrants allowing the holding company to purchase 700 million shares of the banking giant's common stock at $7.14 per share.



BAC data by YCharts.

Roughly six years later, BoA stock was trading above $24 per share, and Buffett moved to exercise the warrants. The purchase immediately made Berkshire Hathaway Bank of America's largest shareholder, and it remains so to this day. BoA stock accounts for approximately 11.2% of Berkshire's stock portfolio as of this writing, and Berkshire owns roughly 12.6% of the banking company's outstanding shares.

3. Chevron
Berkshire Hathaway initiated a position in Chevron (CVX -2.23%) stock in 2020 and poured billions of dollars in additional investment into the stock in 2022. That proved to be a great move.

Berkshire's large position in Chevron played a huge role in the investment conglomerate's market-beating performance over the last year. Spurred by high oil prices, the energy giant wound up the best-performing component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index in 2022.



CVX data by YCharts.

While falling gas prices caused Chevron's share price to dip around 5% year to date in 2023 and lag the Dow's roughly 3% gain across the stretch, the energy company has still been crushing the index since the beginning of last year. Even with the valuation dip in 2023, Chevron stands as Berkshire's third-largest holding and accounts for roughly 9.8% of the company's equity portfolio.

4. Coca-Cola
Warren Buffett has never been an official spokesperson for Coca-Cola's (KO 1.52%) soft drinks. However, he's made enough public appearances sipping on Cokes and Diet Cokes through the years that the beverage giant has certainly gotten some promotional mileage from it. The Oracle of Omaha also likes the company so much that he's said he would never sell a share of its stock, and it currently makes up 8.5% of Berkshire Hathaway's stock portfolio.

Coca-Cola also has one of the best dividend growth streaks of any publicly traded company. At 60 years of consecutive annual payout growth, the company is a decade past the 50-year marker needed to join the illustrious ranks of the Dividend Kings. Only nine public companies have longer dividend growth track records, and Buffett and other shareholders will very likely be treated to another dividend increase when the company publishes its upcoming fourth-quarter report.

5. American Express
Berkshire currently owns roughly 20% of American Express's (AXP -0.36%) stock, and that ownership stake will likely increase even if the investment conglomerate never buys another share. American Express has been on a substantial buyback spree in recent years, buying back and retiring nearly a third of its outstanding shares over the last decade.



AXP EPS Diluted (TTM) data by YCharts. EPS = earnings per share. TTM = trailing 12 months.

In addition to growth in its number of active members and total transaction volume conducted across its network, retiring shares has been a substantial positive catalyst for earnings-per-share growth. The company has also returned value to Buffett and other shareholders in the form of dividends and raised its payout by 160% over the last decade.

Based on its stock price as of this writing, AmEx accounts for 7.5% of Berkshire's equity holdings.

American Express is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. Bank of America is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, Bank of America, and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2024 $47.50 calls on Coca-Cola, long March 2023 $120 calls on Apple, and short March 2023 $130 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Five Clues This Isn't Just a Bear Market Rally
Ryan Detrick
Posted on February 7, 2023
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" John Maynard Keynes

Stocks are off to a roaring start to 2023, which has many claiming this is just a bear market rally and one that will likely end with new lows. Carson Investment Research has quietly been taking the other side to these vocal bears, saying many times that October was likely the end of the bear market and that better times were potentially in the cards. In fact, we upgraded our view on equities to overweight from neutral in late December and added equity risk to the models we run for our Partners as a result.

Two big reasons for our optimism are that we don't see a recession this year, and everyone is bearish. Regarding the macro outlook, last week's 517k jobs number does little to change our stance. Additionally, I've done this for a long time, and I've never quite seen everyone as bearish as they were late last year. Remember, the crowd is rarely right, as we discussed in Is Anyone Bullish?

The S&P 500 is up 17% from the October lows, the same magnitude as the 17% rally we saw last summer. Back then, stocks rolled back over and made new lows, something most strategists on tv are saying will happen again.

Well, the facts are changing for us, and as Keynes told us in the quote above, we had better change our minds as well. So here are five clues that this rally is on firmer footing and will likely continue.

The Trendline
The S&P 500 finally broke above the bearish trendline from 2022. As you can see below, each time this trendline was touched, stocks sold off, usually hard. However, this time, stocks broke above the trendline and accelerated higher, a clear change in trend. Not to mention, the S&P 500 also moved significantly above the 200-day moving average, which clues that the trend has changed.



More stocks are going up.
Even though the S&P 500 is still more than 10% away from a new all-time high, we are seeing more and more stocks making new 52-week highs, yet another sign that this rally, indeed, is different. As you can see below, the first part of last year saw less and less stocks making new highs, a potential warning sign under the surface. Well, today is near 180, with more and more stocks breaking out to the upside. With more stocks strong, the likelihood that the overall indexes follow is potentially quite high.



Wider breadth and participation
Another clue that more and more stocks are trending higher is that more than 70% of the stocks in the S&P 500 are above their 200-day moving average. This is the most since  2021; in other words, more participation than any time we saw last year. As the chart below shows, when this gets above 65%, it signals a potential shift to a stronger trending market. For example, we saw this above 65% for much of the bull market of 2021. Once this broke beneath 65% in late 2021, it was a warning sign of potential trouble brewing.



High beta is doing better.
We saw leadership from things like utilities, healthcare, and staples this time a year ago. In other words, the defensive part of the market. Today we are seeing those groups underperform, with high-beta names doing well, another clue that this rally is on better footing. So let's sum it up like this, you don't want the defensive stuff leading to a proper healthy bull market.



The Golden Cross
Lastly, a rare technical development took place last week on the S&P 500, as the 50-day moving average moved above the slower-trending 200-day moving average. This development is known as a "Golden Cross," which has tended to resolve bullishly for stocks.

Since 1950, there have been 36 other Golden Crosses on the S&P 500 and the future returns have been strong, with the S&P 500 higher a year later nearly 78% of the time and up 10.7% on average, with a median return of close to 13%. The bottom line is that this is another sign that things appear to be improving more than anytime we saw last year.



Taking it a step further, historically, this Golden Cross took place nearly 13% away from all-time highs. We looked, and when Golden Crosses happened more than 10% or more away from new highs, the future returns got better. Higher a year later, 15 out of 16 times (93.8%) and up a very solid 15.7% on average is something most bulls would likely take, I'm sure.



Let's be clear, after this huge start to the year, and we wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw some type of weakness or consolidation in February. That would be perfectly normal action after the run we've seen, but the bigger picture, we see many clues that this looks like more than a bear market rally, and continued strength in stocks in 2023 is potentially likely.

AUTHOR
Ryan Detrick
Chief Market Strategist
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Devon Energy: Buy This Deep Correction
Seeking Alpha: Stock Market Analysis / 2023-02-19 15:0526

anilakkus

The Market's Gift After DVN's FQ4'22 Earnings Call
Devon Energy Corporation (NYSE:DVN) recently announced its FQ4'22 earnings call, with a minimal EPS miss by -$0.09 and a lower fixed plus variable dividend of $0.89, against the previous $1.35. While we had expected lower numbers attributed to the normalization of oil/gas prices thus far, it appears Mr. Market overreacted, punishing the stock with a drastic -12.8% plunge in the days after.

Perhaps the gloom could also be attributed to the lower than expected guidance for FQ1'23 production volume of 635K Barrels of Oil Equivalent per day (BOE/D), against consensus estimates of 657K BOE/D and FQ4'22 performance of 636K BOE/D. However, we must also highlight that the lower than expected guidance was attributed to a fire incident in one of its compressor stations in Delaware, which will likely result in significant infrastructure downtime for repairs through FQ1'23.

Naturally, Mr. Market's concern for FQ1'23 output was justifiable in our view, since the bolt-on acquisitions of Williston and Eagle Ford in 2022 were expected to collectively contribute an additional 60K BOE/D. However, things might pick up from FQ2'23 onwards, due to DVN's FY2023 guidance of between 643K and 663K BOE/D, against the FY2022 levels of 610K BOE/D.

On the other hand, the management guided a relatively higher forward break-even rate of $40 WTI oil prices, compared to FY2022 levels of $30. While this was attributed to the persistent inflationary pain triggering higher contractual refresh rates by late 2022, we might see a notable bottom-line impact in FY2023.

In addition, investors might also experience potential FY2023 dividend headwinds, attributed to the higher than expected capital expenditure guidance of between $3.6B and $3.8B in FY2023. The number indicated a tremendous increase of up to 49.6% YoY from FY2022 levels of $2.54B.

The pessimistic market sentiment was especially worsened by the drastic normalization in WTI crude oil/ natural gas prices by -35.2%/ -75.5% to $77.67 per barrel and $2.38 per MMBtu at the time of writing, against hyper-pandemic levels of $119.81 and $9.73, respectively.

Therefore, while DVN delivered a record high Free Cash Flow of $6B in FY2022, it appears that this feat might not be repeated moving forward, with market analysts already expecting a normalized generation of $4.01B in FY2023 and $3.73B in FY2024.

Nonetheless, while its long-term debts of $6.18B by FQ4'22 may seem elevated, investors must also note that only $714M will be due over the next two years. Combined with the cash and equivalents of $1.45B by the latest quarter and excellent shareholder returns with $5.17B of total dividends paid out/$804M in shares repurchased in 2022, we think the dividend headwinds may not be as severe as feared.

With the company prioritizing its fixed plus variable dividends, we may see a consistent fixed quarterly dividend of $0.20 through 2023, with variable dividends potentially adding another ~$2.00 for the whole fiscal year. This is based on debt repayment of $242M and share repurchases of $700M in 2023, fully executing its $2B program expiring by May 2023.

Barring another share-repurchase authorization, those numbers suggest an annualized total dividend of $2.80 in 2023, triggering an improved forward dividend yield of 5.02% based on current stock prices, against its 4Y average of 4.03% and sector median of 4.29%.

While our projection may be comparatively lower than FY2022 levels of $5.17, it is already a notable expansion from FY2021 levels of $1.97. Investors must also note that the oil/gas industry is highly cyclical anyway, which explains the fluctuation in the company's quarterly payouts, attributed to the fixed plus variable dividend policy.

Therefore, we believe investors looking for stable dividends payouts should avoid DVN and take a look at Chevron (NYSE:CVX) or Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) instead.

So, Is DVN Stock A Buy, Sell, or Hold?
DVN 1Y EV/Revenue and P/E Valuations


S&P Capital IQ

DVN is currently trading at an EV/NTM Revenue of 2.39x and NTM P/E of 8.36x, lower (on a P/E basis) than its 3Y pre-pandemic mean of 2.21x and 18.08x, respectively. Otherwise, it is relatively higher than its 1Y P/E mean of 7.49x.

Based on its projected FY2023 EPS of $7.53 and current P/E valuations, we are looking at a moderate price target of $62.95, relatively lower that consensus estimate's target of $74. Even so, there is a notable 12.9% upside potential from current levels in our view.

DVN 1Y Stock Price


Trading View

In addition, with DVN already plunging drastically since the unsatisfactory FQ4'22 earnings call, we may see more stock weakness ahead, testing the previous July 2022 bottom in the low $50s. Assuming so, investors may consider adding then, due to the improved margin of safety to our price target. Those levels would also improve its forward dividend yield to 5.5% as well.

Recovery may also come earlier than expected over the next few quarters, with the US SPR stockpile already declining to 1983 lows at 371.57M as of February 10, 2023. Notably, these levels indicate a tremendous fall by -37.4% from December 2021 levels of 593.68M and by -41.7% from FY2020 levels of 638.05M.

The SPR stockpile will probably need to be replenished sooner rather than later with the country's energy security potentially at stake. In that case, we may see the recovery of WTI crude oil prices toward the mid $90s, further aided by OPEC and Russia's reduced output through 2023. We believe this correction presents an excellent opportunity for investors to dollar cost average accordingly, while partaking in DVN's more than decent dividend payouts moving forward.

Naturally, it is important for investors to proceed with caution since this stock remains volatile in the foreseeable future, and is only suitable for those with a higher risk tolerance.

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