Stocks look poised for gains in Asia’s holiday-thinned trade, as investors weigh an unexpectedly strong U.S. jobs report and the sustainability of the latest selloff in bonds.

Equity futures in Japan pointed to a modest rise, with markets closed in China, Hong Kong and Australia. S&P 500 futures were little changed after closing higher Friday on a payrolls report showing U.S. employers added the most jobs in seven months. Treasuries look set to claw back some of their losses in Asia’s shortened trading session Monday, after the 10-year yield rose to 1.72%.

Oil futures eased in early trade after OPEC+ decided to boost production and Saudi Arabia raised prices for shipments to Asia. The dollar was little changed against its major peers.

SG

Beer and liquor giant Thai Beverage Public Co (ThaiBev) announced that the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited (SGX-ST) had, on Thursday, issued its conditional eligibility-to-list (ETL) letter for the potential listing of ThaiBev's brewery unit on the SGX mainboard. In February, ThaiBev confirmed that it is looking to spin off and list brewery unit BeerCo, and had received a no-objection letter from SGX for the listing of nearly 20 per cent of it.

The board of Aztech Group will deliberate the use of proceeds from the sale of vendor shares in the recent listing of its subsidiary Aztech Global, and will take into consideration the interests of Aztech Group's minority shareholders. Michael Mun, executive chairman and chief executive of Aztech Global, said the sale of the vendor shares during Aztech Global's IPO (initial public offering) was "primarily to reward shareholders of Aztech Group, including minority shareholders from the previous listing exercise". Shareholders of Aztech Group will be updated in due course on what will be done for them, Mr Mun said.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) has confirmed that it has been asked to suspend the daily passenger service from Singapore to Hong Kong from April 3 till April 16, said the national carrier in a statement late Friday. The passenger service from Hong Kong to Singapore is, however, not affected. The suspension comes after a transit passenger who travelled on board flight SQ882 and had a negative pre-departure test result, subsequently tested positive on arrival in Hong Kong. Three other transit passengers who also had negative pre-departure test results, were subsequently found to not have fully met the regulatory requirements of the Hong Kong authorities based on their test documents, said the statement.

Indonesian coal miner Geo Energy Resources said that the mandatory offer to purchase the 8 per cent senior notes issued by its wholly-owned unit, Geo Coal International, will fall away on Sunday. It has satisfied the minimum requirement of 84 million tonnes of regulatory-compliant coal reserves that it had to meet. Under a covenant, Geo Coal International would have had to make a mandatory offer to purchase all of the outstanding notes, due 2022, if it did not meet the minimum coal reserve requirement.

Wilmar International has obtained a three-year, US$150 million sustainability-linked loan from OCBC. The loan will be used to finance general corporate and working capital requirements, the agribusiness group said last Thursday. The loan is pegged to Wilmar's continued inclusion in an external benchmark index, among other sustainability targets. It is also the group's second sustainability-linked loan with OCBC, both parties said in a joint press statement.

The total value of Singapore stocks rose in March, led by gains from the local lenders and blue chips that got a boost following significant corporate restructuring announcements. Total market capitalisation of Singapore's 688 counters edged up 7 per cent to S$901.9 billion on March 31 from S$843.1 billion as at end-February. The number of counters that gained outnumbered losers 341 to 193. Mainboard-listed counters' total market value was 7.1 per cent higher from a month ago at S$890.1 billion. Catalist stocks, on the other hand, gained 1.3 per cent in total market value to S$11.8 billion.

US

Tesla reported first-quarter vehicle production and delivery numbers for 2021. In total, it delivered 184,800 vehicles and produced 180,338 cars. Analysts were expecting Tesla to deliver around 168,000 vehicles during this period, according to estimates compiled by FactSet as of April 1. Estimates ranged from 145,000 to 188,000 deliveries. The Q1 deliveries beat Tesla’s previous record of 180,570 deliveries in Q4 2020.

Details from more than 500 million Facebook users have been found available on a website for hackers. The information appears to be several years old, but it is another example of the vast amount of information collected by Facebook and other social media sites, and the limits to how secure that information is. The availability of the data set was first reported by Business Insider. According to that publication, it has information from 106 countries including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses.

US employers added the most jobs in seven months with improvement across most industries in March, as more vaccinations and fewer business restrictions supercharged the labour market recovery. Non-farm payrolls increased by 916,000 last month and February employment was revised up to a 468,000 gain, according to a Labour Department report Friday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists was for a 660,000 rise. The unemployment rate fell to 6 per cent. Rising Covid-19 infections had severely restrained the labour market for months, but now more than two million Americans are getting vaccinated daily and economic activity is picking up. This also helps explain why the workforce participation rate edged up in March.

The U.S. reported on Saturday another daily record of new Covid vaccine doses administered, pushing the weekly average of new shots per day above 3 million, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The public-health agency on Saturday reported 4.1 million new doses were given, the highest daily mark since the Food and Drug Administration cleared vaccines for emergency use late last year.

The blank-cheque listings craze is shifting fortunes on Wall Street, knocking some of the world's biggest banks off their perches and bringing unexpected bragging rights for others unaccustomed to competing for league-table glory. Cantor Fitzgerald LP, long one of the top underwriters for special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), has been the biggest beneficiary of the boom and ended the first quarter as the No 10 adviser on initial public offerings (IPOs) globally. The boutique, which has not ranked that high for any full year in the past decade, got 99 per cent of this year's deal credit from blank-cheque work, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. Without those deals, it would be 155 places lower.

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