:00:00. > :00:00.management organisation that ran the block are likely to be
:00:00. > :00:15.Now on BBC News, all the latest business news live from Singapore.
:00:16. > :00:23.It has been a bumper week of earnings fall the tech names, but is
:00:24. > :00:31.on shares fall after earnings miss their mark. -- is on shares. --
:00:32. > :00:34.Amazon. And as the US company on track to meet President Trump's
:00:35. > :00:40.ambitious goals? Second-quarter GDP figures are released today. Hello,
:00:41. > :00:46.and welcome to Asia Business Report. I'm Sharanjit Leyl. It has been a
:00:47. > :00:49.big week of earnings from tech companies, household names, with
:00:50. > :00:54.services that are very much part of a everyday lives. We have seen
:00:55. > :00:59.fantastic quarterly results from Google's parent company, Alphabet,
:01:00. > :01:03.as well as Facebook. But the latest, Twitter, has bucked the trend. Its
:01:04. > :01:08.quarterly report card showed the company's revenue was down about 5%
:01:09. > :01:15.and advertising revenue fell by about 8%. Now, the microblogging
:01:16. > :01:22.service hosts about 328 million active users every month worldwide.
:01:23. > :01:27.That is unchanged from the previous quarter. 79% of the accounts are
:01:28. > :01:31.registered to users outside the United States. One third of those
:01:32. > :01:36.are right here in the Asia-Pacific. And one more statistic. Eight out of
:01:37. > :01:42.ten of those active users access Twitter via their mobile devices.
:01:43. > :01:46.Meanwhile, Amazon just reported their profits fell more than 77% as
:01:47. > :01:53.the e-commerce giant expands its footprint. One area is in Southeast
:01:54. > :01:57.Asia. Amazon Prime office delivery service to the region, including
:01:58. > :02:00.here in Singapore. It promises to bring products like groceries to
:02:01. > :02:05.your door in just two hours by ordering on their app. It is the
:02:06. > :02:12.current -- the company's first for a into this region, and it is going
:02:13. > :02:16.head-to-head with China's Alibaba. Earlier I spoke to the chief of a
:02:17. > :02:18.consumer technology website and asked them why these well-known
:02:19. > :02:23.companies had a difficult learning season. You never know what happens
:02:24. > :02:29.in the financial world. It is quite interesting in terms of the
:02:30. > :02:32.innovation. For example, Amazon Prime, promising to our delivery
:02:33. > :02:35.times in Singapore, that is quite exciting for the south-east Asian
:02:36. > :02:40.market. We have never had anything like this before. Let's look at
:02:41. > :02:43.Twitter. Twitter is failing to grow meaningfully beyond its 328 million
:02:44. > :02:54.monthly active users, at a time when its rival, Facebook, has reached 2
:02:55. > :02:58.billion users. So what is the trend? Well, it is still a growth market, I
:02:59. > :03:04.think. Out of the top ten Twitter users in the world, the Asia Pacific
:03:05. > :03:08.has about four or five of them. If you include Turkey in that equation,
:03:09. > :03:14.or even Russia, that is a lot of growth potential for active Twitter
:03:15. > :03:17.users in Southeast Asia alone you have Indonesia, the Philippines and
:03:18. > :03:21.Thailand. They are very active on Twitter. It would be good for
:03:22. > :03:26.Twitter to focus perhaps on this part of the world. They are losing
:03:27. > :03:30.active users in the United States. I think they are down to 68 million
:03:31. > :03:37.active users per month there, down from 70 million. I was thinking that
:03:38. > :03:42.with Donald Trump's appetite for tweeting early in the morning,
:03:43. > :03:45.unfiltered tweets, that they will actually attract more active users,
:03:46. > :03:52.but that doesn't seem to be happening. Obviously Amazon's
:03:53. > :03:55.problems, part of it is spending so much an expanding globally,
:03:56. > :04:00.including here in Southeast Asia. You are at the launch of the is on
:04:01. > :04:05.Prime service here in Singapore. -- Amazon Prime. Do you think it will
:04:06. > :04:08.succeed? It is promising, if they can deliver in two hours. We have
:04:09. > :04:12.never seen anything like that before. It adds convenience to
:04:13. > :04:16.people who can shop at home and wait for their deliveries. That is a good
:04:17. > :04:24.business proposition as far as I'm concerned. That was Tim Goh. So, how
:04:25. > :04:28.has America's economy been doing lately? We should find out later
:04:29. > :04:32.today when the latest GDP figures, the gross domestic product numbers,
:04:33. > :04:36.are released. This will tell us how much the economy grew in the last
:04:37. > :04:39.three months. It comes at a time in the current administration has been
:04:40. > :04:48.promising growth rates of 3% or more. That is a goal that some
:04:49. > :04:52.experts believe is pretty lofty. As candidate for president, Donald
:04:53. > :04:57.Trump had ambitious goals for America's economy, believing he
:04:58. > :05:05.could make the country's GDP saw. -- soar. We are bringing it from 1% to
:05:06. > :05:09.4%. I think we could go to 5% or 6%. But the realities of governing the
:05:10. > :05:13.country has the president singing in a more muted tone. The various
:05:14. > :05:16.players on President Trump's economic team have suggested that
:05:17. > :05:21.America's economy could grow around 3%. You would need productivity to
:05:22. > :05:29.go back to levels seen only at the peak of the tech boom, in order to
:05:30. > :05:34.get sustainable rates of growth, at 3% or 3.5%, or better. We have only
:05:35. > :05:38.done that for a few years, in the entire post-World War II
:05:39. > :05:42.environment. So I think it is very unlikely that anything on the fiscal
:05:43. > :05:45.policy front will get us on a sustainable 3% or better. It was
:05:46. > :05:48.fiscal policy that had the International Monetary Fund
:05:49. > :05:53.downgrading America's growth prospects both for this year and the
:05:54. > :05:57.next. In the IMF's opinion, whatever fiscal policy does get made may not
:05:58. > :06:03.be as growth boosting as previously hoped for. The continuing saga of
:06:04. > :06:08.repealing and replacing Obamacare has had a cascading impact on
:06:09. > :06:12.President Trump's legislative priorities. Reforming this country's
:06:13. > :06:17.complicated tax code, and passing a $1 billion spending bill, those
:06:18. > :06:21.things that would have a direct impact on America's economic growth.
:06:22. > :06:25.But the likelihood of getting either of those two things anywhere close
:06:26. > :06:34.to the President's desk is looking highly unlikely.
:06:35. > :06:38.In other news, Baidu 's net profits rose more than 83% as the company
:06:39. > :06:41.bounced back after a crackdown on its core business by Chinese
:06:42. > :06:45.regulators. Internet search company has been focusing on investing in
:06:46. > :06:51.artificial intelligence and developing cloud capacity as it
:06:52. > :07:00.reshuffles its core business. Earlier this month, Baidu partnered
:07:01. > :07:04.with Ford and Nvidia to launch assault driving car platform.
:07:05. > :07:07.Starbucks is spending over $1 billion for a full stake in the
:07:08. > :07:11.fast-growing Chinese market. The coffee chain said it would buy the
:07:12. > :07:15.remaining shares of its east China business from its joint business
:07:16. > :07:18.partners. Starbucks is China's fastest-growing market outside the
:07:19. > :07:22.US by number of stores. The deal would help the company reach its
:07:23. > :07:32.target of operating 5000 stores in mainland China by 22 and one. --
:07:33. > :07:37.2021. Singapore -based Noble Group has announced it will sell most of
:07:38. > :07:41.its assets in the US to try to raise cash and focus on its operations
:07:42. > :07:43.here in Asia. The firm has been hit by a collapse in commodities prices
:07:44. > :07:50.and allegations of improper accounting. The Singapore -based
:07:51. > :07:55.company has lost 75% of its market value this year. Its share price has
:07:56. > :08:01.plunged by half after the company warned of a quarterly loss of around
:08:02. > :08:05.$1.8 billion. Earlier I spoke to Simon Littlewood, the president at
:08:06. > :08:08.consultancy house ACG about why the company is in such trouble. They
:08:09. > :08:13.have made one mistake after another. It is ironic Singapore places so
:08:14. > :08:17.much emphasis on commodities trading as a core industry. There are about
:08:18. > :08:21.17,400 people employed in the industry in Singapore. It has
:08:22. > :08:25.compound annual growth of about 7%. The trade minister last month was
:08:26. > :08:28.talking about how important it is. Noble has got in all kinds of
:08:29. > :08:33.trouble by basically expecting commodities to continue to go up. It
:08:34. > :08:37.is not clear that they have a solution to their serious working
:08:38. > :08:40.capital issues. They have raised a number of armed issues in the
:08:41. > :08:45.market. They have burned through that money. The second quarter of
:08:46. > :08:48.this year they lost a staggering 1.8 billion US dollars in one quarter.
:08:49. > :08:54.The share price dropped by nearly 40% overnight. So the outlook is not
:08:55. > :08:58.good. And the responses to that have been to sell-off elements of the
:08:59. > :09:01.core business, essentially selling the silverware, selling capital
:09:02. > :09:09.assets in order to fund what our innocence working capital problems.
:09:10. > :09:12.-- what are in essence. And they have announced they will lay off
:09:13. > :09:16.half their staff in Singapore. When a business lays off half the stuff
:09:17. > :09:20.but carries on doing the same thing, you have to wonder what they were
:09:21. > :09:23.doing before. They are going from 800 400, good news if you work for
:09:24. > :09:27.them. Let's look at commodities. One of the reasons they are in trouble
:09:28. > :09:31.is that they bet the wrong way on where commodities are headed. Where
:09:32. > :09:34.do you see commodities going, and how will it impact on other firms in
:09:35. > :09:36.Asia? There is a difference between soft commodities and hard
:09:37. > :09:39.commodities. Soft commodities are essentially crops, things like
:09:40. > :09:42.coffee beans and animals and potatoes, stuff like that. As long
:09:43. > :09:46.as the human race continues to expand, which it does, and as long
:09:47. > :09:49.as countries become richer and people have more context diets, the
:09:50. > :09:56.basic level of demand this of commodities will continue to go up.
:09:57. > :10:02.Jack complex diets. -- diets. So there are ups and downs in the
:10:03. > :10:06.markets, but broadly it is positive. At commodities are different. Iron
:10:07. > :10:08.ore is very important in Asia but is driven primarily by Chinese
:10:09. > :10:15.infrastructure demand. That demand is tapering off. They have massive
:10:16. > :10:19.-- massive overcapacity in their steel industry. They are seeking to
:10:20. > :10:21.export that by creating foreign initiatives largely funded by
:10:22. > :10:25.Chinese loans all across Southeast Asia and all across central Asia.
:10:26. > :10:30.That will explore some of that capacity, but overall demand will be
:10:31. > :10:35.softer for iron ore. That was Simon Littlewood, speaking to me earlier.
:10:36. > :10:36.That is all for this edition of Asia Business Report. Thank you for