Company Briefs: ST Engineering

ST Engineering posted a net profit of $274.4 million for the six months to Dec 31, 2021, a rise of 3.8 per cent year on year.

The engineering company said yesterday that due to a "significant" reduction of non-taxable government support in the second half of financial year 2021, its second-half net profit growth was lower than its profit-before-tax growth for the same period of 20.1 per cent year on year to $297.8 million from $248 million. Revenue for the second half of FY2021 was $4.04 billion, a 12.7 per cent increase from $3.59 billion a year ago, as all three business segments posted higher revenue year on year.

THE BUSINESS TIMES

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Coinbase

Coinbase Global shares slumped about 3 per cent in post-market trading after the biggest United States cryptocurrency exchange cautioned that trading volume will decline in the first quarter compared with the fourth quarter.

The disappointment comes even after the company reported a jump in revenue to US$2.5 billion (S$3.4 billion) in the fourth quarter, compared with the US$2 billion average estimate by analysts. The closely watched metric of monthly transacting users was 11.4 million, beating the average analyst estimate of 9.8 million and up from 7.4 million in the third quarter.

BLOOMBERG

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Alibaba

Alibaba Group Holding will focus on retaining users rather than pursuing the aggressive market share grab of years past, recalibrating its strategy after relentless curbs on China's Internet sector.

Chief executive Daniel Zhang sketched out on Thursday how China's e-commerce leader will now prioritise user retention over acquisition - a key shift for a firm that achieved massive scale by defeating rivals like eBay and fought rivals in arenas from media to the cloud and commerce. On Thursday, it reported the slowest revenue growth since it went public, underlining how Beijing's tech sector crackdown is taking a financial toll.

BLOOMBERG