SoftBank Plans ¥100 Billion Subordinated Bond Deal Amid AI Drive
The yen-denominated notes will have a final maturity of 35 years and an early call option after five years, according to lead underwriter Daiwa Securities Co. Pricing is expected later this month. The proceeds from the deal will help fund the early redemption of yen hybrid notes that have a voluntary call date in February, according to a press release from SoftBank.
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Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Asics' US Wholesale Business Is Booming
Asics Corp. raised full-year guidance and a projection for operating profit ahead of plan following a strong second quarter report. Results for the three months ended June 30 were helped strong strong performance in its performance running, sportstyle and Onitsuka Tiger categories. Asics' core performance sports category also showed gains in the quarter. Results were more than enough for the Japanese sportswear company to raise its operating profit projection for the year to 136 billion yen, one year ahead of its initial expectation as stated in its Mid-Term Plan 2026. The prior estimate for Fiscal Year 2025 was 120 billion yen back in February. It guided net sales to 800.0 billion yen for the year, up from 780.0 billion yen. More from WWD Asics Is Introducing a Super Bouncy Foam While Expanding Its Blast Franchise With Two New Models Asics, Salomon and Anta Are Experiencing Massive Growth on StockX in 2025 Shoe Prices Started to Climb in July After Months of Declines Also providing a tailwind to updated projections was 'reduced uncertainty around U.S. tariff impacts,' Asics said on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump said last month that it had the parameters for a trade deal with Japan that set tariffs for Japanese imports to America at 15 percent, down from a proposed 25 percent. The final terms of the deal are still being negotiated. Even with the additional tariffs, the company raised upward its full-year operating profit guidance for the North America business to 15.0 billion yen from 11.5 billion yen. Net sales were also guided upward to 145 billion yen from February's forecast of 136 billion yen. Data for Asics North America — the region that includes the U.S., Canada and Mexico — showed a quarterly profit for the eighth time in the past nine quarters, driven by success of the wholesale channel. U.S. wholesale sales rose nearly 40 percent from year-ago levels. The running and sportstyle businesses also posted double-digit increases from year-ago levels. On a local currency basis, the U.S. and Mexico produced double-digit growth, while Canada reach a high single-digit growth year-to date. Separately, in retail, Asics' Meatpacking store posted a net sales growth of 15.5 percent in the quarter, aided by implementation of omnichannel initiatives to bolster the in-store assortment mix. 'The consistent demand for Asics footwear products across the region speaks to our relentless pursuit of developing technically advanced performance running products while remaining very aware of broader cultural and lifestyle trends to support the sportstyle category,' Koichiro Kodama, president and CEO of Asics North America, said. He said both the Megablast and Sonicblast performance running models, part of the company's Blast footwear series, will have expanded offerings for consumers this fall. The overall Asics operation ended the second quarter with earnings that rose 41.8 percent to 22.0 billion yen, up from 15.5 billion yen a year ago. Net sales were up 15.7 percent to 194.4 billion yen from 168.0 billion yen. By category, running net sales rose 4.8 percent to 86.9 billion yen for the quarter. The category was led by Novablast 5, which showed strong sales worldwide. Asics has also been actively introducing new products, taking advantage of momentum from the upcoming World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 slated for next month. In core performance, net sales were up 8.2 percent to 18.6 billion yen. The category was driven by sales for shoes such as the DS Light X-Fly 6, a soccer spike that provides a barefoot feel with its SilkyWrap construction, as well as footwear for volleyball and all racquet sports. The sportstyle unit posted a 43 percent jump in net sales to 32.1 billion yen, driven by strong performance of Vintage Tech and sales of Gel-NYC from the Modern silo and Kinetic Fluent from Vis-Tech. The category also celebrated the 10-year anniversary of its Gel-Quantum franchise. The Onitsuka Tiger business posted a 45.2 percent jump in net sales to 37.5 billion yen. Its Tiger loafer features a distinctive silhouette with a voluminous toe. Net sales were robust in Japan to inbound tourists and in the Europe and Greater China regions. An Onitsuka Tiger store opened in Covent Garden, London, in May, and on the Champs-Élysées, Paris, in July. Asics said the Onitsuka Tiger will participate in Milan Fashion Week in September. Earlier this year saw the Sneaker Politics x Asics 'Just Say No' release, while earlier this month Asics released its new Gel-Sekiran sneaker in the U.S. for the first time, with JD Sports as an exclusive partner for the launch. And separately last month, Asics America moved its North American head office to 179 Lincoln Street in Boston's Leather District. The new five-story, 221,474-square-foot building, which is LEED Silver-certified, spans an entire city block and once was home to a shoe factory. Best of WWD All the Retailers That Nike Left and Then Went Back Mikey Madison's Elegant Red Carpet Shoe Style [PHOTOS] Julia Fox's Sleekest and Boldest Shoe Looks Over the Years [Photos] Sign in to access your portfolio
TechCrunch
28 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
Pocket FM gives its writers an AI tool to transform narratives, write cliffhangers, and more
India-based audio series platform maker Pocket FM aims to be the Netflix of audio. That is, the company intends to match its audio series with hundreds of episodes to its users' tastes. For that to work, it needs to release content rapidly — something it's now turning to AI to help with. The Lightspeed-backed startup is giving its writers an AI tool set that can do things like suggest better endings to an episode or make the narrative more engaging. The hope is that the tools will speed up the storywriting process. Pocket FM already uses some AI tools like ElevenLabs to generate voices for audio series. It also tested AI tools for writing and adaptation assistance internally. Rohan Nayak, Pocket FM's founder, said it's rolling out the AI tools to all writers, so it will take them less time to finish their episodes. Image Credits: Pocket FM The writing tool, dubbed CoPilot, can be used to help any writer create a story. CoPilot can transform narrative-based writing into dialog-based writing for a specific segment. It can also do 'beat analysis' to shape the writing in a way to makes it more engaging for an audio series of a particular genre. The tool additionally has basic chatbot-style writing features such as 'shorten,' 'expand,' and the ability to generate text via a prompt. To build CoPilot, the company examined thousands of hours of data points to understand what makes users engage more with a particular storyline in a specific genre. Based on that, it added writing suggestion features designed to increase conflict between characters and recommend endings for an episode to make it more exciting. AI can also suggest tags for background effects that can be used while producing the audio. The tool can automatically generate bios of characters, their relationships, and summarize plot points of different episodes, allowing creators to refer back to these details while writing. CoPilot also has a review tool, which checks for plot points, grammar, and leaves qualitative feedback through comments on an episode. Under the hood, Pocket FM is training smaller models to maintain context for a story for character arcs and relations, along with narrative consistency. Plus, utilizing signals from users, the startup is nudging AI to add more drama to the story. International expansion and localization plans Alongside the arrival of the AI tools, Pocket FM launched adaptation tools for various markets that not only translate the text from one language to another but also change names and phrases that are more suited to that region's culture. The company first debuted this tool as a part of the CoPilot suite in Germany earlier this year to convert stories from other regions after reportedly struggling to engage users in the European country last year. Nayak said the company saw great results from this trial, with a constant increase in monthly in-app revenue, which crossed $700,000 in June. Image Credits: Pocket FM 'When we started expanding into new regions, it used to take us 12-18 months to meaningfully exist in that market. You have to have at least 1,000 hours of content to start acquiring users and scaling the market. Now we can do this in less than three months,' Nayak said. The tool increased writer productivity by up to 50% for the German market in terms of show output. Plus, the tool helped the company create more error-free drafts of the shows that resulted in higher user retention for audio series. In the U.S, series created with the help of these new AI tools are now contributing 10% of playtime. Plus, these shows have generated $7 million in revenue in the last 12 months while reducing the cost of production by 2-3 times. Building tech to scale content generation As a result of adopting different AI features internally, Pocket FM has been able to scale the content quickly. The startup said it launches close to 1,000 pilots per month. And just the sheer volume of content results in a few of them becoming hits. But the audio show is just one part. The company is already working on tools to convert stories into comic strips with its Pocket Toons platform. Plus, Nayak said video is a possible format the company could explore, too. The startup, which has raised over $196 million in funding across rounds, is experimenting with a micro drama app as well. Image Credits: Screenshot by TechCrunch By next year, Pocket FM wants to release its own singular large language model (LLM), which will be based on data collected from its shows and incorporate different tools like writing assistance, adoption, dramatization, and story context retention. The company said that when it switches to its own LLM, it won't need to train a ton of small models for separate features. AI's potential downsides Adopting AI has had its side effects. Pocket FM has already laid off people who were employees or contractors across multiple rounds in the last 12 months. There have also been reports of writers seeing diminished returns over time. And the company is facing lawsuits in California over employment and wage issues. 'Like most content-led industries, we work with a diverse network of writers, voice artists, and production partners on a project basis, tailoring resources to each market. AI has had minimal impact on our core creative community; instead, it has opened new avenues to expand reach and output,' a company rep said, in response to these layoffs. There are questions around quality, as well. The company measures quality by the retention numbers of a show. The base argument is that the new AI tools act as a writers' room even for solo creators, so they will be able to produce more content at a rapid rate. Plus, based on the numbers, writers can quickly edit the story with the help of AI. However, these tools can very well induce 'AI slop' — or low-quality, AI-generated content — into the platform and could impact a user's recommendations, making it difficult for them to discover good stories. Pocket FM argues that stories that have a solid structure will gain popularity, despite AI helping them. The company noted that every piece of content is reviewed by its AI-powered moderation framework to ensure quality and originality. It also claims its AI moderation checks for things like duplication, copyright issues, content health, and other quality measures before approving audio to go live. Each show receives and equal push, and user engagement ultimately determines a show's ranking. Another concern is that writers could become overly dependent on AI over time. In Germany, AI is writing more content than humans per show for select titles. With Pocket FM's plans to roll out more AI tools, the amount of AI-written content could increase. And with that, the expectation of churning out more shows could rise, too. Unless user adoption also rises rapidly, average returns could drop. The company didn't directly address TechCrunch's questions about returns, but said that its AI tools can speed up a writer's work and help them edit an episode based on numbers and audience feedback. That is they could make targeted improvements, instead of doing a full rewrite. 'This way, faster content creation doesn't necessarily dilute quality or relevance; it just shifts the writer's role towards editing, refining, and steering more productive output,' a spokesperson said in a statement.
Bloomberg
29 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Axon Uses AI to Enhance Public Safety
Axon President Josh Isner joins Open Interest to discuss AI innovation in public safety, aiding the government with new technologies, and expansion plans to international and enterprise sales. (Source: Bloomberg)
