Finance

Barclays earnings Q4 2024

Published

3 months ago

February 13, 2025

Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images

British bank Barclays on Thursday posted a rise in full-year pre-tax profit that came in just ahead of analyst expectations, while also launching a £1 billion share buyback.

Pretax profit rose by 24% to £8.108 billion in 2024, just above analyst expectations of £8.081 billion, according to LSEG.

Since last year, Barclays has been implementing a strategic overhaul to whittle down costs by £2 billion by 2026, lift shareholder returns and stabilize financial returns, sharpening its focus on the profitable consumer and lending operations — and leading to the absorption of the retail banking business of British grocer Tesco’s.

Yet Barclays‘ traditionally strong banking unit could now stand to benefit from more open market share in the domestic space, as HSBC last month announced it is preparing to exit its M&A and equity capital markets businesses in Europe, the U.K. and the U.S. amid a larger restructure of its investment banking operations.

The bank has also been recovering from a sweeping three-day tech outage that disrupted payments and transactions at the end of last month, which has since been resolved.

More broadly, lenders have been battling lethargy in the U.K. economy and a pullback in IPO activity in the London Stock Exchange. The Bank of England executed its first rate cut of the year last week and signaled further trims in 2025 amid a downgrade in the U.K.’s economic forecast — with monetary easing typically eating away at bank profits, as it tightens the spread between lenders’ return in loans and their payout on deposits. British and European banks are also struggling to keep pace with counterparts in the U.S., which could benefit from an additional competitive edge if newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump takes a lighter approach to local regulation.

In parallel, U.K. Finance Minister Rachel Reeves is prodding Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority toward promoting competitiveness in tandem with consumer protection, with markets eyeing the government’s Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy due out in spring.

This breaking news story is being updated.

Finance

Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: AAP, SNOW, HUM, LUMN

Published

1 hour ago

May 22, 2025

Business Finance News

Finance

China’s Xiaomi claims new phone chip rivals Apple at a cheaper price

Published

2 hours ago

May 22, 2025

Business Finance News

Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi is developing its own chip called Xring O1.

Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

BEIJING — Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi is taking on Apple’s iPhone with an advanced chip and a cheaper phone.

Xiaomi is winning the battle on the pricing of its latest phone. The new Xiaomi 15S Pro starts at 5,499 yuan ($764) — making it eligible for a state-subsidized discount — and is significantly cheaper than Apple models containing the company’s most advanced phone chip. The iPhone 16 Pro starts at 7,999 yuan, while the iPhone Pro Max model begins at 9,999 yuan — above the 6,000 yuan cut-off for a Chinese government discount for consumers.

And Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun claims his company also has a competitive chip, saying at a launch event on Thursday that Xiaomi’s new Xring O1 beat Apple’s A18 Pro on several technical metrics, including the ability to operate a game with less heat.

CNBC has not independently verified these claims. CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment.

“Apple is still number one,” Lei said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation. He said the Xring O1’s performance should not be seen as an attempt to pressure Apple, but rather as an indicator of the great effort Xiaomi made to develop a comparable processor.

The U.S. has increasingly restricted China’s ability to access high-end equipment for developing advanced semiconductors used in training artificial intelligence models.

Lei did not discuss any significant AI features for the 15S Pro, but showed how it could be used to lock and unlock a compatible car.

He announced that Xiaomi will spend 200 billion yuan on research and development in the next five years, starting from 2026, and predicted 30% revenue growth this year.

Lei had teased the 3 nanometer chip last week on Chinese social media app Weibo. He later noted the chip is in mass production and said the company would invest at least 50 billion yuan ($6.9 billion) over the next 10 years in its own chip development.

Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max use A18 Pro chips built on the same 3 nanometer process.
Around 40% of Xiaomi’s phones currently use chips by Qualcomm and MediaTek, according to Counterpoint Research Partner Niel Shah.

Xiaomi spent 13.5 billion ($1.87 billion) over four years to develop the Xring O1, Lei said in a social media post. He revealed that the company started developing chips in 2014 and unveiled one in 2017, before temporarily suspending such research.

Last spring, Xiaomi launched its first electric car, the SU7 sedan, with a price $4,000 below that of Tesla’s Model 3 at the time. Ford CEO Jim Farley said he spent months driving a Xiaomi electric car, as he tried to assess competition from Chinese automakers.

Xiaomi’s first SUV, called the YU7, will be officially released in July, Lei said in a social media post, noting the car’s price wouldn’t be revealed Thursday. Lei did share some promotional images and car features at the event.

The company delivered more than 28,000 vehicles in April, down from its record of more than 29,000 during the previous month. That comes after the crash of an SU7 vehicle in China, which left three people dead. China has since required automakers to use more conservative language when advertising driver-assist systems.

Xiaomi is set to release its first-quarter results on May 27, after the company in March reported record revenue and net profit for 2024. Sales generated from overseas markets last year accounted for nearly 42% of total revenue.

The company’s shares remain more than 50% higher year-to-date.

— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal and Bernice Ooi contributed to this report.