Asian equities look set to retreat after U.S. stocks closed off all-time peaks as a drop in Coinbase and technology shares overshadowed strong bank earnings. Futures dipped in Hong Kong and Australia and were steady in Japan. Treasuries slipped in U.S. trade and the dollar extended losses into a third session. Bitcoin touched a record of $64,870 before easing. Oil jumped above $63 a barrel as shrinking crude stockpiles in the U.S. supported hopes for a global demand recovery.

The Federal Reserve will likely taper off its bond purchases before considering raising interest rates, Chair Jerome Powell said. “We will reach the time at which we will taper asset purchases when we’ve made substantial further progress toward our goals from last December, when we announced that guidance,” Powell said Wednesday. “That would in all likelihood be before — well before — the time we consider raising interest rates.” Policy makers will wait until inflation has reached 2% sustainably and the labor-market recovery is complete before considering lifting rates, and the combination is unlikely to happen before 2022, he said. Their forecasts last month signaled rates being held near zero through 2023.

SG

Singtel joint-venture company Bharti Airtel has announced a new corporate structure to "sharpen (its) focus on digital", which will also enable it to unlock value, it said in a statement on Wednesday. Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, said: "The new structure sets the exciting future course for Bharti Airtel and provides focus on the four distinct businesses - Digital, India, International and Infrastructure, each, in a razor-sharp way." Under the new structure, Airtel Digital Limited will be folded into the listed entity, Bharti Airtel. This would house all its digital assets, such as Wynk Music, Airtel X stream and the Mitra Payments platform.

Mainboard-listed Sinarmas Land has sold a freehold office and residential property in London for a cash consideration of £72 million (S$131.8 million), it said on Wednesday. The property - Unlimited House, located at 10 Great Pulteney Street - was owned by Sinarmas' wholly-owned subsidiary SML Great. The freehold property provides 44,116 square feet of Grade-A office space and a self-contained five-unit residential block of 2,928 square feet. Assuming that the disposal had been effected last Dec 31, and based on the consideration and pro forma net asset value of £56.5 million, the group would have recorded a gain on disposal of approximately £15.6 million, Sinarmas said.

Boustead Projects' wholly-owned subsidiary Boustead Projects E&C (BP E&C) has agreed to a settlement with Veolia ES Singapore Industrial in relation to a 2017 contract. In an exchange filing on Wednesday, Boustead said the companies have amicably agreed to settle their disputes regarding the project, with BP E&C to pay Veolia a net sum of S$4.9 million as part of the settlement. Last September, Boustead announced that BP E&C had received a letter of demand from solicitors acting for Veolia ES Singapore Industrial for the payment of S$17.8 million. This was in relation to a 2017 contract where Veolia appointed BP E&C to carry out civil and associated works for a Singapore hazardous waste-treatment facility.

Procurri has received a letter dated April 13 from substantial shareholder DeClout indicating that the latter intends to vote against Novo Tellus' partial offer of 36.5 Singapore cents per share, the enterprise hardware supplier said in a bourse filing on Wednesday. The offer is made by OCBC on behalf of the offeror NTCP SPV VIII, which is an investment vehicle owned by Singapore-based private equity fund Novo Tellus PE Fund 2. The partial offer was launched to acquire an additional 27.91 per cent of Procurri's shares. If the partial offer had been successful, the offeror would have owned a 51 per cent stake in Procurri. This is a result of share transfers from another Novo Tellus wholly-owned subsidiary and co-investor ACT Holdings, which are part of the deal.

Entertainment group mm2 Asia raised nearly S$54.7 million after the close of its rights issue on Thursday. Announced on Feb 3, the issue was priced at 4.7 Singapore cents per rights share, which represents a discount of around 60.8 per cent to the closing price of 12 Singapore cents per share on Feb 1, being the last trading day prior to the announcement. At its close, valid acceptances and excess applications for around 113 per cent of the available shares were received. In a press statement on Tuesday, the mainboard-listed company said that the majority of net proceeds from the rights issue will be primarily used to reduce existing liabilities

US

Dell shares rose as much as 9% in extended trading on Wednesday after the company announced its plan to proceed with the spinoff of its 81% ownership of enterprise software maker VMware. The deal should close in the fourth quarter of 2021. VMware will collectively distribute a cash dividend worth $11.5 billion to $12 billion to shareholders, including Dell, Dell said in a statement. Dell will receive $9.3 billion to $9.7 billion, which will position it well for investment grade ratings, the company said. Dell currently has a BB+ credit rating from S&P Global, giving the company a speculative grade, according to S&P Capital IQ.

American Airlines is expanding its summer schedule in a bet that the resurgence of travel demand will continue as more people get vaccinated. This summer, American plans to fly more than 90% of the domestic schedule and 80% of the international schedule it operated during the peak season of 2019, adding 150 new routes for the peak vacation season. American said its first-quarter capacity was down more than 43% compared with the same period of 2019. Airlines eager to capture a rebound in travel are weighing how much capacity to deploy this summer. Demand has climbed as more people have been vaccinated against Covid-19, travel restrictions ease and more attractions, like Disneyland, prepare to reopen.

Coinbase shares closed at $328.28 in their Nasdaq debut on Wednesday, giving the cryptocurrency exchange an initial market cap of $85.8 billion on a fully diluted basis. The shares opend at $381 and quickly shot up as high as $429.54, before dropping back below the debut price and reaching a low of around $310. The price was still well above the reference price of $250 set Tuesday night, though no shares changed hands at that price. Skirting the traditional IPO process, Coinbase listed its stock directly, allowing employees and existing shareholders to sell shares immediately at a market-based price. In pursuing a direct listing, Coinbase followed tech companies like Spotify, Slack, Palantir and Roblox, which helped standardize the process.

American Eagle Outfitters announced Wednesday that its business is pacing ahead of its expectations for the fiscal first quarter, as stimulus checks and pent-up demand are fueling sales of jeans, dressier tops and leggings. Revenue is on track to top $1 billion, it said. Analysts had been calling for American Eagle to earn 23 cents a share on sales of $904.1 million, according to a poll by Refinitiv. The company didn’t provide a fresh earnings estimate. Its shares jumped more than 8% in after-hours trading.

Consumer prices shot higher in March, given a boost by a strong economic recovery and year-over-year comparisons to a time when the Covid-19 pandemic was about to throttle the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The consumer price index rose 0.6% from the previous month but 2.6% from the same period a year ago. The year-over-year gain is the highest since August 2018 and was well above the 1.7% recorded in February. The index was projected to rise 0.5% on a monthly basis and 2.5% from March 2020, according to Dow Jones estimates.

The U.S. government’s budget deficit surged to an all-time high of $1.7 trillion for the first six months of this budget year, nearly double the previous record, as another round of economic-support checks added billions of dollars to spending last month. In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit for the first half of the budget year — from October through March — was up from a shortfall of $743.5 billion for the same period a year ago. The deficit has been driven higher by trillions of dollars in support Congress has passed in successive economic rescue packages since the pandemic struck in early March 2020. The latest round came in a $1.9 trillion measure that President Joe Biden pushed through Congress last month.

Wall Street traders just showed the Reddit crowd how it's done, with big banks tallying surprisingly massive hauls for the quarter. Goldman Sachs earned more from trading in the first three months of the year than it had in any quarter in the past decade, while JPMorgan saw such revenue climb 25%. The boon was thanks in part to the day-trading crowd who tried to stage an investment revolution in January, organizing on forums such as Reddit to drive up GameStop and other so-called meme stocks. Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, also helped boost revenue from equity underwriting.

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