tencent up 1.4%. also a beat.d reiterate further sales growth this year despite china's car market slowing due to weaker consumer spending. as we said, tencent planning to double its stock buyback program this year. it posted a lower-than-expected -- expected revenue due to soft domestic game sales. let's get more with robert lee. what is your take on those numbers? robert: you said it all in your intro. i'm not sure what else i can add. domestic games have been a source of weakness through the last year. whilst in all honesty the revenue numbers did come through, weaker than expected. we saw a shift towards high-margin businesses driven by short videos. driving 150 basis points in the gross margin level. the overall numbers were 1% ahead or so. i think it became apparent that the drivers that we saw coming through in q4 is what is likely to continue to drive the company answer fundamental earnings through 2024. we take comfort from that. haslinda: i apologize for stealing your thumper. how did the q4 results impa

but tencent is not trading on multiples.here the china market is at the moment, given the relative underperformance of the stock, i think there is quite compelling risk reward opportunity there for tencent. i think if the markets -- numbers are coming in line, and if the outlook is driven by short videos is upbeat, i think the market should take that quite well. haslinda: we know the game businesses in doing well. he recently added tencent to the b.i. focus list, why is that? robert: for any readers who actually follow my research, i was cautious on them last year because i think there was a mismatch of expectations. with the economy reopening, some people were looking for a turn to business as usual. business as usual being projected growth for 20% to 30%. i think that was unrealistic and we won't see that. as i've said, we've had significant centers of -- significant underperformance in the stock. i think the market expectations on consensus are more realistic. investing is about risk reward. i think there is a compelling

speaking of earnings, looking at tencent, reported lower than expected 7% rise in revenue.elle: yeah, even after the gaming sales disappointed and we know the firm is planning to double its stock buyback program to at least $12.8 billion this year with us now is our guest from citigroup. we saw the move in tencent adr's overnight so it seems like the buyback program was at least enough to try to appease or impress investors to an extent that was that more of a focus for you or a miss on headline expectations? >> i would say double down on the shareholder returns is a reassurance. aside from that, other than just looking at the total revenue growth, i think investors should pay more attention to the gross profit growth, which is growing at double-digit. this quarter is 25% your of your growth and it's been accelerating the past few quarters the main reason is tencent has been focusing on the higher quality revenue stream, which to some extent is net revenue but higher margins. the vas line is pure profits and the video advertising is relatively higher margins. the financial

tencent is looking at the foundational level as well. it's trying to play a part of that game as well. it's a very difficult market, i think, for a lot of these chinese tech companies, in early the stages of these companies. you look at alibaba, tencent, et cetera, a lot of companies are struggling to revive growth because the macro situation in china continues to remain tough, but also that sort of high growth, you know, no-rules scenario which they've been used to for so many years, the regulation has been tightened up so much, there are question marks how they're going to grow. a lot of these companies, tencent and alibaba include ready talking about ai. but i think they need to show there is still legs to a lot of these products that they're pushing out, like gaming and wechat. >> what were they saying last year. war has begun is what tin cent had said. >>> we have to push on nvidia. we look premarket at nvidia's stock. this is the early stages. we've got a slight slippage over the past couple of days. the pricing structure of blackw

tencent can grow its earnings and free cash flow easily in the 10% to 15% range in the next 10 to 15at's a relatively solid outlook for a large tech business, is that truly reflected in market price and expectations? we've recently added it to our focus list. we think there's a mismatch with expectations. haslinda: we are weighing earnings from on high, against the backdrop of weakness in china for apple. how much of an impact might that have on hon hei numbers? robert: apple accounts for more than half of the numbers. 2023 was weak because of the stocking in the mainstream smartphone mpc market but that is played through. this year it's a better outlook across their core markets as growth resumes. however, the apple overhang and uncertainty will impact them. we did see reports a couple of weeks ago about apple's smartphone shipments and china being down something like 24% in the first six weeks of the year. it remains to be seen -- first of all it's not true, it is speculated. secondly, if we see continued weakness on the apple front, to what extent will that impact hon hei? i think

it is one thing to watch and with more earning coming out this week, with tencent and xiaomi, that will us a broader assessment of whether this earnings season is as positive as the ones that have reported so far so even with only 25% of msci china reporting, there have been aggregate expectations. on top of the china macro data watching, earnings are definitely a big thing this week. >> that was charlotte yang and i am really glad you mentioned it as well because we have china pledging extra support for its ev sector as the e.u. looks to add more moves, tariffs on imports. we will have more news coming next. this is bloomberg. ♪ >> china will take pragmatic measures to support the growth of the new energy vehicle industry according to the head of the country's national development and reform commission. the call comes as domestic ev makers steer up to report their quarterly earnings. byd following the next week and those results could provide better insight into the impact of the price war begun by tesla and how that strategy will impact some of these other countries as well -- compani

for tencent we are expecting its earnings to show double-digit growth in earnings-per-share. they are growth. this is according to bloomberg intelligence. it is expecting continued strength from short videos as well as ai related ads. that is one thing to keep an eye on. they also got the long rates out of china. this was as expected. it doesn't seem to matter so much if you're looking at chinese bonds because it seems there is still continued speculation that we will get easing somewhere down the line. equities showing a bit of positivity coming through. today surged the most since six months ago. this is on the back of a report that nvidia is considering buying its memory chips. really showing how nvidia reaches across the supply chains. as we count down to the fed, let's take a look at how the currencies are faring on the korean won. we see a bit of strength. pretty tight ranges all things considered. it is post boj day. this is lower against the euro since 2000. it is all about the hawks on the dubs. >> think you very much indeed. with the focus in asia still on the fed a

tencent and ali baba in the green. baidu in the red.internet. >> it's actually been an interesting six to eight weeks. there's been a struggle. there's been a struggle to get through levels. we've had some nice runs. these have been trading stocks. the macro in china, i think, is -- it's easy to point out the negative. it's easy to point out the property issues. the underowned and the sentiment levels in this country for owning some of their mag seven is low, i've been -- look, i've been adding kweb to client accounts. as you're looking for places, for people in the next two to three years, i don't think there's any question you want to be in china. you talked about the b in blicep, i think they recognize, the whole spin-off thing was supposed to create value at ali baba, and it's been slowed down a bit. i think some of this is clumsy. i think china looks really interesting. and the global growth. >> all of these big chinese internet companies are returning capital to shareholders, for b baba, tencent. you like china. from a long time a

that's the trade and we've seen good flows into hong kong stocks and tencent reporting today, equitieseporting might be positive, but have not seen that aimed at demand. you're going to see the spread wide in, so we like it from a long short perspective. stimulus is lacking demands so until we see the situation will not see a selloff. yuan fairly stable, no lasting impression in the equity market. haidi: chris weston, head of research at pepper stone group. beijing's top diplomat holding meetings. we discuss implications. first hearing from the philippine president about tensions and manila's efforts to defend sovereignty. this is bloomberg. ♪ ahhhhhh filing sales tax returns? ahhhhhh business license guidance? ahhhhhh -cross-border sales? -ahhhhhh -item classification? -ahhhhhh does it connect with acc...? ahhhhhh ahhhhhh ahhhhhh ♪ haidi: the chinese foreign minister is meeting with penny wong and they are expected to live tariffs. ben wescott joins us. ben: china is optimistic. this is a high watermark in relations given that this is it the most senior official to visit australia. li

tencent is being more aggressive, investing in ai, senior not seeing dealmaking that alibaba is doingaba is a step behind, but they are getting aggressive in dealmaking. annabelle: how does that set up the internal competition space when baidu was seen as the number one in the race? peter: china is a market apart because the chinese government will not allow foreign companies, you have a free playing field for domestic competitors and we will not get openai or microsoft. there is internal competition and baidu has been seen as ahead. alibaba is a step behind and do not forget the parent of tiktok. they have data, ai capabilities, they have been quietly making aggressive moves. haidi: that was peter elstrom. more ahead, this is bloomberg. ♪ okay y'all we got ten orders coming in... big orders! starting a business is never easy, but starting it eight months pregnant... that's a different story. i couldn't slow down. we were starting a business from the ground up. people were showing up left and right. and so did our business needs the chase ink card made it easy. when you go for somethi

it's a pivot that hope to take on tencent.se government is encouraging ev makers to reduce reliance on western imports to boost china's semiconductor industry. the u.s. plan will fund samsung's in texas. now let's turn our attention to cybersecurity top of mind for executives, you and me as individuals. microsoft personal secretary -- security management. there isn't ai offering widely available on april 1. how much easier as her life going to get? >> is so great to be here with you thank you for having me. to understand why we did security is to step back to face the sophistication of attacks. we saw an increase in identity attacks. this is why we designed the profile of security, the industry's first generative ai product that's based on open ai models. i do believe the next 18 months of aei innovation will determine the next 18 years of cybersecurity. we believe that security will help all defenders. caroline: this has been quietly rolled out and tested. what is interest in bound look like? >> we announce copilot for securi

with tencent holdings at 1.3% in that particular trade rated may be the earnings aren't exactly whatnds up being focused upon when it's more about the job by back that everyone was saying. week gain sales in particular. had been managing in markets trade bread this is bloomberg television. ♪ - super excited to open up my diploma from southern new hampshire university. ♪ ♪ - i'm nervous, i'm excited. ♪ ♪ - [man] okay, let's see it. let's see it. - oh my gosh. - jesus suarez, i did it and it's here. (group cheers) ♪ ♪ - [narrator] next term starts soon. visit snhu.edu. visit snhu.edu. ed: asked her -- astera labs set to open significantly above its ipo price of $36 a share. shares indicated to open it $53 as of around 15 minutes past 11 eastern time. 246% premium on where they priced it. let's get straight to bloomberg deals reporter, your reaction. >> there've only been three venture backed ipo since 2021. they are popping significantly which this is after already pricing above their revised range. they kept revising it higher because there was so much demand, institutional investors.

investors will be looking for clues as to whether the company will join tencent, alibaba in returningto shareholders in the form of dividends or buybacks. bloomberg intelligence joins us for a preview. a crucial holiday period. tell us what we are expecting. >> looking into meituan. we are looking to see if the company expands its share buyback program. one billion is not huge in the scheme of things have been what we have seen coming through from the china tech companies. the question is, will they start to distribute dividends given what the rest of the e-commerce companies have done so far. haidi: what about the outlook in terms of what that tells us about how the strength of the consumer or the household in china given the structural nature of the slow down? how is it feeding through to the bottom line? >> definitely we are on the lookout for what comes through and the impact on ticket sizes when it comes to food deliveries as well as whether the company was able to achieve benefit from the uptick in travel demand. domestic tourism in particular over the lunar new year holidays. t

a company could unveil its ev and visions by earnings as well from tencent. it is also about the bank of japan and its -- this speculation ramping up in the markets pricing and the hike from the boj. futures and tenure reversing some of the moves from last week . it did not forget, we had to be a jade today coming through with a massive liquidity operation via repos indicating that they do not want to tolerate any big fluctuations in the bond space, and regardless, it looks like it will be a while even if the doj moves tomorrow before we see 1%, let alone 2% of the 10 year. let's flip the board, because what we are minding is the gap between the u.s. and japan, and again hovering at the 149 level. equities also still powering through those gains accelerating toward the close on the nikkei, and it is really about the fundamentals, so this is what we are seeing as we count down to the boj and the fed. tom: fantastic breakdown of the asian markets this monday. let stand on there's no story, image or week at central banks. the fed, bank of japan among those that

. >> s&p 500 down about two tencent 1%, nasdaq 100 down just a little bit more.ix in the green ever so slightly but still signaling that we have lots of complacency as we have the s&p 500 near record highs. the ten-year yield of four basis points, so bonds are selling off. interesting that we have stocks and bonds selling off on the same day. were we had real weakness before was for the chips, amd in particular. might have been the worst day since january when it was down more than 4% on the news that china is the ring may be limiting or in chips, but you can see we've seen lots of recovery here, so here is the rally that we had last week. just to show the depth, you can see the big tip down more than 1%, just fractionally down 1/10 of 1%, so investors really thinking about that. of course, boeing united airlines, boeing at this point of 8/10 of 1%. including ceo dave calhoun out by the end of 2024, stephanie pope will be in. effective today, the head of commercial airlines hopefully fixed a lot of the safety issues and incidents they had. speaking of safety inci

if you think about major us firms, think about snapchat, for example, tencent was a big investor there, right? so they could limit investment from their big private equity firms, venture firms, into you let's companies, which is a big part of our economy. the thing to understand here, boris, is that in the us, our values, right? capitalism, open democracies can be weaponized by other governments who don't share those same values and so i think what we're looking at here is this could create sort of an economic did taunt between the two big wolf powers. and that, you know, has a huge impact. we saw even during covid, right? when supply chains were being stretched between the two firms, it could be a big deal >> josh, you recently wrote about donald trump's change of heart when it comes to tiktok after his administration push to ban it with an executive order that was overturned in the courts he's now opposed to regulating tiktok the way that this legislation does in your piece for the washington post, you tie some of trump's financial issues given his legal problems with this change of

several of the large chinese players that you mentioned by tencent, etc., had quantum computing efforts. and they have several of them, if not all of them, have shut down in the past six months by doing that. they were selling all their quantum hardware, quantum computing hardware to national lab. that concentration to the national lab thwill appear to b consolidating even more in just the past six months. i don't have great visibility as to why, but i do make that decision. and my guess would be that tay would assess that they were not particularly competitive in that space and they were far behind the u.s. companies that did not seem to be catching up. and they did not see it as a revenue generator. so the extent that we could talk about chinese thinking as m a whole would be further doubling down on the national laboratories. none of the chinese quantum technology companies seem competitive globally ever. >> so you would characterize it as an increased risk that they are consolidating under the government control and these capabilities teor along with an assessment by these companies

i have some of them. 10 sent, alibaba, alipay, obviously, we chat, tencent, pub t-mobile commanders other apps that are doing that. >> we did a paper on this. at the time, the administration assessed it was a problem largely contains two chinese citizens that were here studying, traveling, and therefore using alipay, because like you, i had that reaction when i walked into cvs. has it changed, do you think, in terms of who is actually using alipay, or all the ones you just listed? i don't think of them as having access to the american market the way that tiktok does. >> from a legal standpoint, i have not done the forensics to see if it is happening but of course, one would say it is what the ccp mandates. there is no legal prohibition. if there is no legal prohibition in china has the desire and motivation to command its companies to do that, let's make our lives easier and assume it is happening, right, and get on with it and try addressing the problem through solutions. >> thank you for those excellent comments. i have a follow-up question for our witnesses. isn't it true that bytedanc

however, adventure investors affiliated with tencent, fid fidelity, just to name a few, is not planningreddit is selling ipo for users. they've also been present in other consumer-facing deals such as airbnb, robinhood, with mixed control. guys. >> the lockup is a little different on those? >> so those would be sold to retail investors. basically it's the same as anyone buying into the ipo. if you're buying them at that price, p it's the ceos who are held, usual lil six months or so. but if you're a retail investor and you buy in to the ipo for the offering, you can sell on day one, should you so choose. that's why we see some vol tilts on day one whether people decide whether they want to bulk up their exposure or flip out of it if the stock is trending higher. >> meanwhile we got information on their inspectsed things like ai and advertising. this was down from a prior round was it in '21? >> yep. that's right. in '21 they were valued at $10 billion, so it'sa 36% discount there. right now they have 98% of the revenue coming from one source, which is advertising. they say the tam for a

that company falling after the discount retailer reported ajust earnings of $2.55 a share, that was tencents, also a miss. that company's first quarterand full year earnings guidance missing the street's expectations. you can see that stock right now, down by 9%. dollar tree says it plans to close 600 family dollar tree stores. this is a company that -- companies were merged, they announced a merger in 2016 and they were talking about the stores being combined and now they're talking about a thousand of those stores that they'll be closing. >>> we're watching shares of intel, this after a bloomberg report said the pentagon is pulling out of a plan to spend as much as $2.5 billion on a chip grant to the company. defense spending was part of a spending package that allocates $3.5 billion for intel to produce advanced defense and intelligence related chips. the commerce department which disperses the chip acts grant was set to pay $1 billion and the pentagon had promised to cover the rest. but the pentagon scrapped that plan in recent days and lawmakers directed commerce to use the chips act fu