Company News in Brief

Prescient unveils SA-focused fund as local investing gains momentumFor much of the last decade, the prevailing theme in South African investment circles has been offshore investing, partly to diversify one’s portfolio geographically and partly to gain exposure to sectors such as the global tech giants which simply aren’t available at home.Yet, despite this, more asset managers are starting to roll out SA-only funds, which, as the name suggests, invest only in domestic assets. The Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (Asisa) even created a new fund category in October 2024 (Multi-Asset SA High Equity funds) specifically to designate balanced funds that invest only in domestic equities, bonds, cash, property and other assets.Asisa is reluctant to disclose the number of funds in the category thus far until its fourth quarter statistics are released in March, but suffice to say, there are only a handful, including the Camissa SA balanced fund and a similar SA-only balanced fund offering from ClucasGray.Prescient Investment Management has also recently launched its own new domestic-only balanced fund. The low-cost fund offering, which has a fee structure of 45 basis points, was seeded with an initial investment of R200 million and targets an asset mix that includes infrastructure (5%), clean energy (5%) and corporate credit (5%) alongside traditional balanced fund asset classes like of equities (60%), bonds (20%) and property (5%)-FIN24 ANC wants Treasury to rescue TransnetThe ANC will ask the National Treasury to consider a once-off debt-relief package for state-owned rail and ports operator Transnet before next month's budget.Transnet requires a similar package to one given to Eskom in 2023, Zuko Godlimpi, deputy head of the African National Congress's economic transformation committee, told reporters on the sidelines of a policy-strategy meeting on Sunday. The Treasury granted Eskom a R254 billion debt-relief package two years ago."We need something massive for Transnet, once off, and it is quite vital because the survival of Transnet and its efficient operation is critical for the South African steel industry, the mining industry and the manufacturing industry," Godlimpi said. "We don't have the option not to rescue Transnet."Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, who is also a member of the economic transformation committee, will deliver his annual budget statement on February 19. He's previously refused new bailouts for the country's ailing state-owned companies unless they get their operations in order.-BLOOMBERG NEWS Alibaba releases AI model it says surpasses DeepSeekChinese tech company Alibaba on Wednesday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model that it claimed surpassed the highly-acclaimed DeepSeek-V3.The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max's release, on the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also its domestic competition."Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms ... almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B," Alibaba's cloud unit said in an announcement posted on its official WeChat account, referring to OpenAI and Meta's most advanced open-source AI models.The Jan. 10 release of DeepSeek's AI assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, as well as the Jan. 20 release of its R1 model, has shocked Silicon Valley and caused tech shares to plunge, with the Chinese startup's purportedly low development and usage costs prompting investors to question huge spending plans by leading AI firms in the United States.-REUTERSNasdaq's fourth-quarter profit rises on fintech strengthNasdaq reported a higher fourth-quarter profit on Wednesday, helped by strong demand for the exchange operator's financial technology products.The company has been expanding outside its market-sensitive core activities of trading and listing to products that help traders navigate compliance requirements and safeguard against financial crimes.Revenue from Nasdaq's financial technology business rose nearly 9.8% in the fourth quarter.Hopes of a soft landing for the U.S. economy, strong equity markets and expectations of a friendlier regulatory environment for deals and offerings under the Trump administration breathed new life into the U.S. IPO market during the reported quarter.Nasdaq stock market's total new listings rose to 162 in the fourth quarter from 100 a year earlier, resulting in a 1.6% increase in the company's data and listing services revenue.Software firm ServiceTitan (TTAN.O), opens new tab and China's self-driving vehicle company WeRide (WRD.O), opens new tab were some of the big names that listed its shares on Nasdaq during the October-December quarter.Nasdaq's solutions business, which houses the exchange operator's financial technology products, reported revenue that increased 10% to $949 million.The company reported a net revenue of $1.23 billion, up from $1.12 billion.Nobody expects the Fed to move, but Treasury yields have been pricing in more cuts.Net profit attributable to Nasdaq, on an adjusted basis, came in at $438 million, or 76 cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with $395 million, or 72 cents per share, a year earlier.The company's shares, which rose 33% in 2024, were up marginally in trading before the bell.-REUTERS

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