Employees hide $154 million in accounts. Macy's said that internal control was ineffective. On Thursday, Macy's said that a reassessment of its financial situation showed that as of February this year, the internal control (including proper record maintenance) of the chain department store was not effective. The retailer launched an evaluation at the end of November after discovering that an employee had concealed as much as $154 million in expenses for many years. Therefore, the company postponed the release of the third quarter earnings report until December 11th. Macy's said that under the supervision of the board of directors, Tony Spring, its CEO, and Adrian Mitchell, its chief financial officer, re-evaluated the effectiveness of internal control, and pointed out that its financial report was not effective as of February 3 due to major defects. The department store chain said that it is implementing changes to improve internal control and make up for major defects.Xiaomi Automobile is speeding up its voyage to sea, and will carry out automobile sales business in many regions. According to 36Kr, it is learned from many sources that Xiaomi is preparing to build automobile voyage business. Under the international department of the Group, Xiaomi has added a preparatory group for overseas sales business, and positions such as market research, project management and after-sales engineer of electric vehicles are being recruited. Under the Ministry of Automobile, Xiaomi's autonomous driving department has added a number of jobs for overseas markets to solve the problem of overseas legal verification and function landing of autonomous driving function. It is foreseeable that autonomous driving will be one of the key points of Xiaomi Automobile's betting on the sea. According to people familiar with the matter, after the formation of the team, Xiaomi will carry out small-batch car sales in many overseas regions, test the market reaction, and prepare for the large-scale development of sea business.CITIC Jiantou: The food and beverage industry is expected to usher in an inflection point. The CITIC Jiantou research report pointed out that 1) focusing on boosting consumption and expanding effective domestic demand, the food and beverage industry is expected to usher in an inflection point, and its performance and valuation are expected to continue to improve. The liquor sector is expected to rebound with the boost of the domestic economy and the activation of household consumption, and the business scene and mass consumption boom will return to the consumption upgrading channel, and the profitability of leading liquor companies is expected to accelerate the repair. At present, the overall valuation of the liquor sector is still at a low level, and the long-term investment value is prominent. 2) With the increase of policy stimulus, the pro-cyclical catering chain is expected to take the lead in benefiting from the expected improvement. Continue to be optimistic: 1) The leisure snacks and beverage industries maintain a high degree of prosperity, and new channels bring important incremental opportunities to companies in the industry; 2) In combination with the catering channels that continue to recover, it is suggested to pay attention to condiments, beer and catering chain labels with innovative products or reform expectations, and at the same time, the current molasses market price is further reduced from the previous month, which is of great help to yeast enterprises to improve their profit elasticity; 3) The inflection point of the raw milk cycle is approaching, the gift scene is expected to be repaired, and the dairy products continue to upgrade their structure, with high dividends and outstanding cost performance.
The 22nd meeting of the expert working group of the Shanghai Defense Ministers' Association was held in Beijing. On the morning of December 13th, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, director of the Information Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense and spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense, released news on the recent military-related issues. Wu Qian: On December 12th, China's Ministry of National Defense held the 22nd meeting of the expert working group of the meeting of defense ministers of SCO member states in Beijing. More than 30 representatives from SCO member states and the Secretariat attended the meeting, and all parties had an in-depth exchange of views on strengthening pragmatic cooperation in the field of defense and security and promoting the construction of cooperation mechanisms.Huatai Securities: The main industrial chain of lithium battery pays attention to the opportunity of profit bottoming, and the new technology focuses on solid-state batteries. Huatai Securities said that the domestic market policy side is superimposed on the enterprise side, and the carbon emission assessment in Europe is overweight in 2025. It is expected that the global new energy vehicle market will maintain steady growth in 2025. Coupled with the rapid growth of energy storage, it is estimated that the global battery demand will reach 1544/1937GWh in 2024/2025, which is +30%/+25% year-on-year. In the fourth quarter, the demand for power and energy storage is improving, and the prices of some links of lithium battery have shown signs of stabilization. We are optimistic about the links with tight supply and demand pattern and strong differentiation, and the performance of related enterprises is expected to rise in volume and price next year. In terms of new technologies, solid-state batteries continue to be tested and promoted, composite aluminum foil is expected to be mass-produced next year, lithium-sodium mixed technology is gradually landing, and fast charging permeability is expected to increase. It is recommended to pay attention to the progress of new technology industries.Bank of Japan: Japanese companies expect consumer prices to rise by 2.3% in three years, compared with 2.3% in the previous survey; Japanese companies expect consumer prices to rise by 2.2% in five years, compared with 2.2% in the last survey.
Asiana Airlines: It is estimated that the debt ratio will drop from the previous 1847% to 700%.The "unlimited price" for a single plot of high-quality land in Beijing has gradually started. After only half a month, Beijing once again auctioned a single plot of land exceeding 10 billion yuan. On December 12, the Wanquan Temple plot outside the southwest second ring road of Fengtai, Beijing was acquired by Zhonghai for 11.054 billion yuan. So far, the total number of land auctions in Beijing has reached 40 this year, and the total amount of land transfer fees has exceeded 150 billion yuan. It is worth mentioning that the future commercial housing sales of this plot are not limited. The industry unanimously believes that the cancellation of the double limit of land price and house price shows that the one with the highest price is becoming a new trend of high-quality land auction in Beijing, and on the other hand, it is a powerful performance of returning the property market to the market. (beijing business today)CITIC Securities: It is expected that the global semiconductor and hardware fundamentals will resume their upward trend from the second quarter of next year. According to the CITIC Securities Research Report, the global semiconductor and hardware fundamentals are expected to remain weak from the fourth quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025, and will resume their upward trend from the second quarter of 2025. Similar to 2024, GenAI is expected to continue to be the core driving force, but industrial opportunities are expected to continue to spread around NVIDIA. At the same time, we should also pay attention to the recovery progress of IT expenditure of European and American enterprises after the US election, the pull of end-side AI and windows10 EOL on consumer electronics and bulk storage chips, and the recovery process of automobile and industrial sectors at the bottom of the cycle. Tariff and trade policies, US macro and inflation data, and GenAI technology progress are expected to continue to be the core influencing variables of the industry. At the sub-sector level, our preference order is: advanced process, AI network (Ethernet equipment and high-speed interface), AI computing chip (ASIC, commercial GPU), AI server, enterprise IT equipment (network equipment, high-end storage, general server), consumer electronics (PC, mobile phone), analog chip, semiconductor equipment, bulk storage chip, mature process and so on.