—— Vanke Monthly Sales Slump Continues; Uber Earnings Beat Forecasts in Second Quarter; US Trade Deficit Shrinks; OpenAI Co-Founder to Join Rival Anthropic; Hedge Funds and Institutions Bullish on Bitcoin After Rout; Airbnb Share Drops 14% Amid Poor Forecasts
1. Vanke Monthly Sales Slump Continues
China Vanke Co.’s sales slump continued in July, intensifying liquidity concerns for the developer amid the ongoing property crisis in the country.
Contracted sales for the month fell 13% year-on-year to 19.2 billion yuan ($2.7 billion), following a 29.3% drop in June, according to corporate filings. The total sales were also 24% lower compared to the previous month.
The extended sales decline is heightening investor worries about the company’s liquidity. Despite being considered a stable player due to its state backing, Vanke has been actively raising funds and exploring asset sales to avoid a cash crunch.
“Vanke’s solvency in 2025 and 2026 remains at risk,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kristy Hung noted in a report on Thursday. “Buyers’ weariness of private developers’ presales and preference for secondhand homes will likely hinder a recovery in its sales and liquidity.”
Vanke’s month-on-month decline in home sales, while significant, is still smaller than the 36% drop observed among the 100 largest real estate companies tracked by China Real Estate Information Corp.
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2. Uber Earnings Beat Forecasts in Second Quarter
Uber Technologies Inc. reported stronger-than-expected orders in the second quarter, highlighting the ongoing demand for rideshare and delivery services.
Gross bookings, which include ride hails, delivery orders, and driver and merchant earnings (excluding tips), increased by 19% to $39.95 billion in the three months ending June 30, according to a statement from Uber on Tuesday. This surpassed analysts’ forecasts of $39.7 billion, as compiled by Bloomberg.
Gig-economy companies like Uber and its competitor DoorDash Inc. have been standout performers during a generally challenging week for the stock market, marked by weak job numbers in the US and disappointing Big Tech earnings. Both companies noted that robust bookings suggest that inflation isn’t deterring consumers from spending on deliveries.
Uber’s strong performance was primarily driven by better-than-expected growth in its ridehailing business, especially in Latin America and the Asia Pacific region. Gross bookings in the mobility (rideshare) division rose 23% to $20.6 billion in the second quarter, with users taking more trips and drivers spending more time on the app compared to the previous year. The platform had 7.4 million monthly drivers and couriers during this period, while ridehailing hours per driver reached an all-time high, according to Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi.
Following the announcement, Uber shares surged more than 8% in premarket trading.
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3. US Trade Deficit Shrinks
Intel Corp. shares experienced their largest decline in over 40 years after the company issued a bleak growth forecast and announced plans to cut 15,000 jobs, indicating that the chipmaker is struggling to compete in the artificial intelligence era.
The shares plummeted more than 26% after trading began in New York on Friday, erasing approximately $32 billion in market value. This represents the stock’s biggest intraday drop since at least 1982, based on Bloomberg data.
Intel projected sales for the current quarter to be between $12.5 billion and $13.5 billion, significantly below the average analyst estimate of $14.38 billion, according to Bloomberg. The company also forecasted a loss of 3 cents per share, excluding certain items, in contrast to analysts’ expectations of a 30-cent profit.
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4. KKR Close to Acquiring Majority Stakes in FGS
Advertising group WPP is close to finalizing a deal to sell its controlling stake in financial communications company FGS Global to private equity group KKR for approximately $800 million.
According to three individuals familiar with the negotiations, WPP could announce the deal as soon as Wednesday, coinciding with the release of its next financial results. The terms under discussion involve WPP selling its 50.5% stake in FGS for about $800 million, valuing the entire communications business at around $1.6 billion. This transaction would increase KKR’s stake in FGS from about 30% to roughly 80%, with the remaining equity held by the company’s partners and management.
Sources close to the deal emphasized the importance of partners retaining some equity as an incentive to stay with the company. However, they noted that the agreement had not been finalized as of Tuesday. Both WPP and KKR declined to comment.
FGS Global was formed through the merger of London-based Finsbury, Frankfurt-based Hering Schuppener, and Washington DC-based Glover Park Group. The company operates nearly 30 offices worldwide, serving more than 1,600 clients. Last year, FGS generated about $450 million in revenue and approximately $95 million in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization.
By acquiring FGS, KKR is betting on its ability to further expand the business and eventually find an exit opportunity, either through a sale to another buyer or a public market listing.
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5. OpenAI Co-Founder to Join Rival Anthropic
John Schulman, a co-founder of OpenAI and a key developer of its ChatGPT chatbot, has departed to join Anthropic, OpenAI’s main competitor. This move marks the latest in a series of high-profile exits from the leading artificial intelligence company in recent months.
Schulman will focus on alignment research at Anthropic, a startup founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, which emphasizes “safety at the frontier” in its work. On the same day, OpenAI’s president Greg Brockman announced via social media site X that he would be taking the rest of the year off.
Schulman’s departure follows that of Ilya Sutskever, another founding member and former chief scientist of OpenAI, along with several other team members.
“This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work, alongside people deeply engaged with the topics I’m most interested in,” Schulman wrote in a note to colleagues on Monday.
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6. Hedge Funds and Institutions Bullish on Bitcoin After Rout
Crypto traders are quickly re-entering the options market with optimistic bets following one of the year’s worst liquidations of bullish positions over the weekend.
Market participants report that traders on both offshore exchanges and US over-the-counter desks are purchasing call options that give them the option to buy Bitcoin at $90,000 and higher later this year.
On August 4, about $1.1 billion in crypto bets were liquidated, marking one of the largest selloffs this year, according to Coinglass. The rout, which started during Asian trading hours, saw Bitcoin drop by as much as 17% and Ether lose more than 20% of its value at one point. However, both cryptocurrencies traded higher by Tuesday. Approximately 50% of the open interest in crypto derivatives was liquidated during the plunge, according to Yevgeniy Feldman at SwapGlobal, a prime brokerage and swaps provider for institutional investors.
“People got extremely liquidated on longs, it was horrific,” Feldman said. “But the US hedge-fund and institutional participants that trade options via OTC desks on Monday and Tuesday restarted making bullish options bets by buying call spreads on Solana and Bitcoin.”
Source: Bloomberg – Hedge Funds Pile Back Into Crypto Call Options After ‘Horrific’ Liquidations
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7. Airbnb Share Drops 14% Amid Poor Forecasts
Shares of Airbnb Inc. plummeted after the company issued a disappointing outlook for the third consecutive quarter and cautioned about decreasing demand from US travelers. This signals that momentum in travel spending is likely to continue tapering off, even during the peak summer season.
In a letter to shareholders on Tuesday, Airbnb indicated a “sequential moderation” of growth in nights and experiences booked for the current period. The company reported an 8.7% increase for the most recent quarter, which fell short of investor expectations. The third quarter is expected to see even flatter growth, with analysts previously projecting an 11% increase.
Following this news, Airbnb shares dropped more than 14% in extended trading on Tuesday. If these declines persist on Wednesday, the stock could experience its largest intraday drop on record.
This outlook suggests the slowest pace of growth since 2020, as demand and travel habits normalize after a particularly strong vacation season in 2023, which coincided with the official end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
These challenges have affected the broader travel industry. Last week, Booking Holdings Inc. provided worse-than-expected guidance, citing “mild moderation” in the European travel market and indications that some US consumers are opting for lower-star hotels and shorter stays.
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本文内容来自《Financial Times》、《Bloomberg》，以及《The Real Deal》等多家财经新闻媒体。