US stocks closed higher on Thursday, with the technology heavyweights rallying ahead of major earnings reports and upbeat domestic economic data calming investor jitters about surging coronavirus cases. The rebound came after a more than 3 per cent slide a day earlier in Wall Street's main indices, underscoring heightened market volatility ahead of the presidential election next week and growing fears of another Covid slowdown.

Stocks rallied as investors anticipated strong results from a line-up of the biggest names in the US corporate universe - Apple Inc, Amazon.com, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook - due after market close.

Industrial agri-food company Japfa's net profit jumped more than fivefold to US$130 million for the first nine months, driven by strong momentum from its China dairy unit and swine business in Vietnam. This comes despite a 2.5 per cent drop in revenue from a year ago to US$2.8 billion for nine months ended Sept 30, following dampened demand for poultry during Covid-19 in Indonesia.

Supermarket operator Sheng Siong posted a net profit of S$31.8 million for its third quarter ended Sept 30, up 54.4 per cent from a year earlier on the back of strong revenue growth. However, this was partially offset by a less than proportional increase in operating expenses. Revenue for the three months climbed 28.9 per cent to S$327.3 million, mainly due to elevated demand arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nanofilm Technologies received applications from retail investors for 30.6 times the number of shares available in the public portion of its initial public offering (IPO), it said in an exchange filing on Thursday. The Singapore public offer attracted more than 8,000 applications for 118 million shares, while only 3.9 million shares were available to the public for subscription. Trading will begin at 9am on Oct 30.

Keppel Corporation's third quarter net profit fell to "significantly lower" levels from same period a year ago, as it emerges from a S$697 million net loss in the preceding quarter. In a business update to the Singapore Exchange on Thursday, the mainboard-listed conglomerate reported that despite swinging back into the black this quarter, it was still loss-making for the first nine months of 2020 due to S$919 million of significant impairments of recorded in Q2.

Mapletree North Asia Commercial Trust (MNACT) on Thursday reported that its distribution per unit (DPU) for the first half ended Sept 30 fell 26 per cent to 2.876 Singapore cents, down from 3.887 cents a year ago. The fall was mainly attributed to rental reliefs granted to tenants at its Festival Walk mall in Hong Kong of S$34.9 million due to the Covid-19 impact, as well as lower average rental rates at Festival Walk and Gateway Plaza, which is located in China.

The domestic retail book of Ant Group's US$34.4 billion dual listing was 872 times oversubscribed as individual investors in China scrambled for a slice of the world's largest initial public offering (IPO), a company filing showed. Investors are rushing to buy into the fast-growing Chinese fintech firm, which operates the country's biggest payments platform and other financial services, despite risks of greater scrutiny at home and abroad.

Source: SGX Masnet, The Business Times, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, Reuters, PSR