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Ramaphosa's Building Spree for South Africa Draws $13 Billion

Ramaphosa's Building Spree for South Africa Draws $13 Billion

Bloomberg6 days ago

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said his plan to turn the nation into a construction site and improve its economic performance has attracted a record of more than 238 billion rand ($13.3 billion) of investment.
The nation's new construction book for the fiscal year that started April 1 lists around 250 projects across various sectors including energy, roads, and water, he told delegates at an infrastructure summit in Cape Town.

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Here's how Uber's product chief uses AI at work — and one tool he's going to use next
Here's how Uber's product chief uses AI at work — and one tool he's going to use next

Yahoo

time18 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Here's how Uber's product chief uses AI at work — and one tool he's going to use next

Uber's product chief said he uses AI to summarize lengthy reports and do research before launches. Sachin Kansal uses ChatGPT and Gemini to understand Uber's performance in overseas markets. He plans to add Google's NotebookLM to his AI suite. Uber's chief product officer has one AI tool on his to-do list. In an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" released on Sunday, Uber's product chief, Sachin Kansal, shared two ways he is using AI for his everyday tasks at the ride-hailing giant and how he plans to add NotebookLM to his AI suite. Kansal joined Uber eight years ago as its director of product management after working at cybersecurity and taxi startups. He became Uber's product chief last year. Kansal said he uses OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini to summarize long reports. "Some of these reports, they're 50 to 100 pages long," he said. "I will never have the time to read them." He said he uses the chatbots to acquaint himself with what's happening and how riders are feeling in Uber's various markets, such as South Africa, Brazil, and Korea. The CPO said his second use case is treating AI like a research assistant, because some large language models now offer a deep research feature. Kansal gave a recent example of when his team was thinking about a new driver feature. He asked ChatGPT's deep research mode about what drivers may think of the add-on. "It's an amazing research assistant and it's absolutely a starting point for a brainstorm with my team with some really, really good ideas," the CPO said. In April, Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said that not enough of his 30,000-odd employees are using AI. He said learning to work with AI agents to code is "going to be an absolute necessity at Uber within a year." Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. On the podcast, Kansal also highlighted NotebookLM, Google Lab's research and note-taking tool, which is especially helpful for interacting with documents. He said he doesn't use the product yet, but wants to. "I know a lot of people who have started using it, and that is the next thing that I'm going to use," he said. "Just to be able to build an audio podcast based on a bunch of information that you can consume. I think that's awesome," he added. Kansal was referring to the "Audio Overview" feature, which summarizes uploaded content in the form of two AIs having a voice discussion. NotebookLM was launched in mid-2023 and has quickly become a must-have tool for researchers and AI enthusiasts. Andrej Karpathy, Tesla's former director of AI and OpenAI cofounder, is among those who have praised the tool and its podcast feature. "It's possible that NotebookLM podcast episode generation is touching on a whole new territory of highly compelling LLM product formats," he said in a September post on X. "Feels reminiscent of ChatGPT. Maybe I'm overreacting." Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

Returns On Capital Are Showing Encouraging Signs At Severfield (LON:SFR)
Returns On Capital Are Showing Encouraging Signs At Severfield (LON:SFR)

Yahoo

time26 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Returns On Capital Are Showing Encouraging Signs At Severfield (LON:SFR)

If you're not sure where to start when looking for the next multi-bagger, there are a few key trends you should keep an eye out for. Firstly, we'll want to see a proven return on capital employed (ROCE) that is increasing, and secondly, an expanding base of capital employed. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. With that in mind, we've noticed some promising trends at Severfield (LON:SFR) so let's look a bit deeper. AI is about to change healthcare. These 20 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part - they are all under $10bn in marketcap - there is still time to get in early. If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Severfield: Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities) 0.12 = UK£32m ÷ (UK£388m - UK£133m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024). Therefore, Severfield has an ROCE of 12%. In absolute terms, that's a pretty standard return but compared to the Construction industry average it falls behind. See our latest analysis for Severfield In the above chart we have measured Severfield's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free analyst report for Severfield . The trends we've noticed at Severfield are quite reassuring. The data shows that returns on capital have increased substantially over the last five years to 12%. The company is effectively making more money per dollar of capital used, and it's worth noting that the amount of capital has increased too, by 25%. This can indicate that there's plenty of opportunities to invest capital internally and at ever higher rates, a combination that's common among multi-baggers. On a side note, we noticed that the improvement in ROCE appears to be partly fueled by an increase in current liabilities. The current liabilities has increased to 34% of total assets, so the business is now more funded by the likes of its suppliers or short-term creditors. It's worth keeping an eye on this because as the percentage of current liabilities to total assets increases, some aspects of risk also increase. In summary, it's great to see that Severfield can compound returns by consistently reinvesting capital at increasing rates of return, because these are some of the key ingredients of those highly sought after multi-baggers. Astute investors may have an opportunity here because the stock has declined 34% in the last five years. With that in mind, we believe the promising trends warrant this stock for further investigation. One final note, you should learn about the 4 warning signs we've spotted with Severfield (including 2 which shouldn't be ignored) . While Severfield may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Ratos Seeks $160 Million from IPO of Nordic Construction Unit
Ratos Seeks $160 Million from IPO of Nordic Construction Unit

Bloomberg

time36 minutes ago

  • Bloomberg

Ratos Seeks $160 Million from IPO of Nordic Construction Unit

Sentia AS, a construction company owned by Ratos AB with projects in Sweden and Norway, filed for an initial public offering in Oslo where it hopes to raise as much as 1.6 billion kroner ($160 million). Ratos will sell as many as 31.9 million shares in the Nordic builder, including over-allotment, cutting its 72% stake to less than 50%, according to a filing Monday. Cornerstone investors including DNB Asset Management and Arctic Asset Management have agreed to acquire 670 million kroner of stock in the offering at 50 kroner apiece, giving an equity value of about 5 billion kroner.

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