29/12/2025

BIZ & FINANCE MONDAY | DEC 29, 2025

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China industrial profits skid at fastest pace in over a year

India’s Zepto files for IPO as quick-commerce race heats up BENGALURU: Indian quick-com merce firm Zepto has confi dentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO), a regulatory filing showed on Saturday, positioning itself among India’s most anti cipated listings next year. Quick-commerce firms in India are locked in an intense battle for market share, pouring in billions to open more stores as India’s growing urban consumer base increasingly opts for 10-minute deliveries for everything from groceries to electronics. Founded in 2021, Zepto offers over 45,000 products and com petes with rivals such as Eternal’s Blinkit and Swiggy’s Instamart. The IPO plan comes at a time when Indian markets are set for a record fundraising in 2025. Zepto was valued at US$7 billion (RM28.3 billion) in its pre vious funding round in October when it raised US$450 million. The confidential route allows companies to keep their IPO filings private until the launch. – Reuters Major Brazilian union rejects Petrobras proposal to end strike RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilian union Sindipetro-NF, one of the largest representing Petrobras workers, has rejected the most recent proposal by the state-run oil firm to end a 12-day-long strike, it said in a statement on Friday. Sindipetro-NF represents about 25,000 workers in the oil industry, including ones in Petrobras’ offshore oil platforms in the Campos basin, the second-highest for oil production in Brazil. Petrobras said in a statement that so far the strike has had no impact on production, as it is using contingency crews to keep operations ongoing. Sindipetro-NF is the largest union under FUP, an umbrella organization for oil workers. FUP’s board had accepted the Petrobras proposal, but the matter still had to be voted by workers them selves. While all other 13 unions under FUP voted to end the strike, the Sindipetro-NF rejection means the protest is set to continue in at least some sites. Not all unions representing Petrobras workers are under FUP, however. The board of a different umbrella organisation, FNP, has voted to keep the protest going, advising unions under it to do the same. The dispute could be long, sources told Reuters, as it deals with complex issues involving the state-run firm’s pension funds and deductions over payments to pensioners. – Reuters

o Down 13.1% year-on-year in November, biggest drop in 14 months, as weak domestic demand offsets strong exports BEIJING: Profits at China’s industrial firms in November fell at their fastest pace in over a year, as weak domestic demand offset resilience in exports in another sign of a stuttering economic recovery that backs calls for additional policy stimulus. Profits fell 13.1% year-on-year in November, accelerating from a 5.5% drop in October, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data released on Saturday. The sharper decline came despite better-than-expected goods exports and against a backdrop of persistent factory gate deflation, maintaining pressure on policymakers to do more to address chronically soft household consumption. The profit numbers are consistent with a broader cooling in economic activity in the fourth quarter, mainly due to the drag from soft domestic demand, said Xu Tianchen, senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Xu said he remained cautiously optimistic about the outlook for industrial profits. “Profitability will improve under ‘anti involution’” as firms scale back investment over time, he said, adding that companies could also “earn more profits overseas”, albeit “at the cost of their global peers”. For the first 11 months of the year, industrial profits rose 0.1% from a year earlier, slowing from 1.9% growth in January-October, driven in part by a 47.3% plunge in profits at the coal mining and washing industry. Momentum in the roughly US$19 trillion (RM76.8 trillion) economy eased toward year end, though authorities have yet to roll out new policy support. China observers say Beijing is taking some comfort from indicators suggesting that the official 2025 growth target of around 5% is still achievable, while a US-China trade truce has also helped ease tensions. However, market expectations centre on the need for further policy support next year to bolster domestic demand and broad economic growth.

Employees working at a production line manufacturing camera lens for mobile phones at a factory in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China. The industrial profit numbers for November are consistent with a broader cooling in economic activity in the fourth quarter. – REUTERSPIC

bright spot, with profits up 10% year-on-year, an improvement of two percentage points from January to October, showed the NBS. At an agenda-setting meeting earlier this month, policymakers pledged to maintain a “proactive” fiscal policy next year to support both consumption and investment. The government has also repeatedly promised to bolster employment, lift household consumption, revive prices and stabilise the property market, which has remained in a prolonged slump. Industrial profit figures cover firms with annual revenue of at least 20 million yuan (RM11.54 million) from their main operations. – Reuters

Against a volatile and uncertain global backdrop, and amid continued structural adjustment as industry shifts from old to new growth drivers, the recovery in industrial firms’ profitability still needs to be put on a firmer footing, NBS chief statistician Yu Weining said in an accompanying statement. China’s economy grew by just 2.5% to 3% in 2025, the Rhodium Group think tank estimates, roughly half the pace implied by official data, driven by a collapse in fixed-asset investment over the second half of the year. By sector, the automotive industry reported a 7.5% rise in profits, accelerating by 3.1 percentage points from the January-October period. High-tech manufacturing was another

Chile’s Codelco, miner SOM team up to exploit lithium SANTIAGO: Chile’s state-owned Codelco, the world’s leading copper producer, and private miner SQM, which features Chinese capital, announced on Saturday the creation of a giant company to exploit lithium, a lightweight metal used in batteries for electric vehicles. in SQM. The new company “will carry out lithium exploration, extraction, production, and com mercialisation activities in the Atacama salt flat until 2060”, Codelco said in a statement. Chilean regulators authorised the alliance earlier in December. Atacama salt flat. In 2022, Chile produced 243,100 tons of the so-called white gold. “This joint venture makes it possible to plan the development of the Atacama salt flat,” and for the benefit of global markets, said Ricardo Ramos, CEO of SQM, one of the world’s leading lithium producers.

The South American country is the world’s second-largest producer of lithium, a key component of EVs and other clean technologies, and has about 40% of the world’s lithium reserves. The partnership between the firms will allow them to jointly ramp up the exploitation of lithium in the Atacama salt flat region of northern Chile. The public-private partnership will be called Nova Andino Litio SpA, said Codelco, which described the deal as “one of the most significant in the history of Chilean business”. The Chinese firm Tianqi holds a 22% stake

The agreement was approved by more than 20 national and international regulatory bodies, including in China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the European Union. Chile was the last of the countries to clear the deal. Last month, China gave the green light to the planned partnership between Codelco and SQM. The partnership aims to restore Chile’s leadership in lithium production, a title it lost to Australia nearly a decade ago. The new company aims to increase pro duction by about 300,000 tons per year in the

The partnership is part of the National Lithium Strategy announced by the leftist government of Gabriel Boric in 2023, aimed at reclaiming Chile’s global leadership in lithium production. According to Codelco, with this agreement the Chilean state will receive around 70% of the operating margin generated by the new production between 2025 and 2030, and starting in 2031, 85% of that margin. Lithium accounted for 3% of Chile’s exports in 2024. – AFP