US orders immediate stop to some AI chip exports to China; Lloyds profits up but lending margins fall – business live | Business
Key events
Here are the opening snaps from across Europe’s stock market indices, via Reuters:
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EUROPE’S STOXX 600 DOWN 0.1%
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FRANCE’S CAC 40 DOWN 0.4%
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SPAIN’S IBEX DOWN 0.3%
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EURO STOXX INDEX DOWN 0.2%
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EURO ZONE BLUE CHIPS DOWN 0.3%
European indices appeared to be taking their lead from the US, where Google owner Alphabet’s share price dropped in after-hours trading last night. That dragged down futures for US tech companies, even though another tech titan, Microsoft, pleased investors.
Analysts led by Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank said:
Microsoft saw its shares rise +3.95% in after-market trading as revenues of $56.52bn (+13% y/y) beat estimates of $54.54bn and EPS came in at $2.99 (v $2.65 expected). The beat comes on the back of recovering cloud-computing growth with corporate customers spending more than expected. The other megacap, Alphabet, missed on their cloud revenue estimates at $8.4bn (v $8.6bn) with the share price falling -5.93% after hours as operating income and margins both surprised slightly to the downside.
You can read more about Google’s performance here:
We’re off to the races on the London Stock Exchange this morning: and the FTSE 100 has dipped at the open.
Shares on London’s blue-chip index are down by 0.15% in the early trades. Lloyds Banking Group shares initially moved higher, but now they are down 2.1% after they flagged increasing competition hitting net interest margins.
Abrupt halt to Nvidia AI chip exports to China; Lloyds profits up
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The US has ordered the immediate halt of exports to China of hi-tech computer chips used for artificial intelligence, chipmaker Nvidia has said.
Nvidia said the US had brought forward a ban which had given the company 30 days from 17 October to stop shipments. Instead of a grace period, the ban is “effective immediately”, the company said in a statement to US regulators.
The company did not say why the ban had been brought forward so abruptly, but it comes amid a deep rivalry between the US and China over who will dominate the AI boom.
Nvidia said that shipments of its A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S chips would be affected. Those chips, which retail at several thousand dollars apiece, are specifically designed for use in datacentres to train AI and large language models.
Demand for AI chips has soared as excitement has grown about the capabilities of generative AI, which can produce new text, images and video based on the inputs of huge volumes of data.
Nvidia said it “does not anticipate that the accelerated timing of the licensing requirements will have a near-term meaningful impact on its financial results”.
Lloyds profits up but competition squeezes margins
In the UK, Lloyds Banking Group has reported a rise in profits even as it said competition was hitting its margins as mortgage rates fall back.
Britain’s biggest bank said it made £1.9bn in profits from July to September, an increase compared to the £576m for the same period last year. The comparison has an important caveat, however: the bank has restated its financials to conform to new accounting rules.
Net interest margin – the measure of the difference between the cost of borrowing and what it charges customers when it lends – was 3.08% in the third quarter, down 0.06 percentage points in the quarter “given the expected mortgage and deposit pricing headwinds”, it said.
The bank did set aside £800m to deal with rising defaults from borrowers, but said that it was still seeing “broadly stable credit trends and resilient asset quality”.
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