☕️ Mother Earth breaks hottest day record twice in a week

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

From 2022 to June this year, 343 children in Perak were involved in criminal activities, according to Salbiah Mohamed, the state Women, Family, Social Welfare, Cooperatives, and Entrepreneur Development Committee Chairman. The highest crime cases among children were drug-related (85 cases), human-related crimes (84 cases), and property crimes (76 cases). 300 child protection advocacy programs are planned nationwide to raise awareness on this matter. This is the wrong kind of ‘start them young’.

USD1 bil — the amount Bloomberg Philanthropies, founded by Michael Bloomberg, would be donating to Johns Hopkins University. With this donation, Johns Hopkins University will offer free tuition to medical students with family incomes under USD300,000 per year. Additionally, it will cover living expenses for those with family incomes under USD175,000 annually. This initiative is expected to benefit nearly two-thirds of current and incoming medical students, providing either full tuition coverage or both tuition and living expenses.

In 2023, deforestation in Colombia decreased by 36%, according to the Environment Ministry. The area deforested fell to just over 792 square kilometres (305 square miles) from around 1,235 square kilometres (477 square miles) in 2022. This reduction aligns with President Gustavo Petro’s efforts to combat deforestation in the Amazon. When he was elected in 2022, Petro promised to prioritise environmental protection and halt Amazon deforestation by limiting agribusiness expansion into the rainforest, among other measures.

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

If you are still lost on what is NFTs, now we welcome the new kid in the block — carbon credits
For those who still believe in good old gold and silver as the go-to trading products, let us explain to you what carbon credits are. Carbon credits are permits that allow companies to produce emissions. It’s an offsetting exercise — the more carbon credits you purchase, the more emissions you can release to the environment. Basically, it’s a way for the capitalist market to turn pollution to the environment into another line in the business cost items. Environmental conservation companies issue carbon credits and environment-polluting company buys them.

Bursa Malaysia Bhd’s Bursa Carbon Exchange (BCX) yesterday auctioned the first carbon credits generated from a local project run by Permian Global. The floor price of the auction is set by Permian at RM50 per tonne of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e), with a 0.2% auction fee and a minimum bid order of 1,000 units. The local project dubbed the Kuamut Rainforest Conservation Project aims to protect and restore 83,381 hectares of tropical rainforest in the Tongod and Kinabatangan districts of Sabah, Malaysia. 8 companies including Petronas, Maybank and CIMB were the first batch of successful bidders.

Sarawak which does not want to lose and miss out on developing the green economy sector has launched the Sarawak Bid Round (SBR) 2024. SBR is launched by Petroleum Sarawak Bhd (Petros) to receive bids from parties interested in developing the carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) industry in Sarawak. Successful CCUS studies in Sarawak estimated a total storage capacity of approximately 1,000 million tonnes (MT) of CO2e.

So you may ask, what is carbon capture? Carbon capture is the process of capturing CO2 from high-polluting industries such as steel production and transporting the CO2 to a secondary location to be stored deep underground. Akin, to carbon credits, it is a way for the polluting companies to leave the dirty work to others and register environmental pollution as another business cost. I love capitalism — anything also can make money.

A second chance for bankrupt individuals
PM Anwar Ibrahim announced that the Insolvency Department has released 142,510 individuals from bankruptcy under the Second Chance Policy that was launched last October. Under the new policy, the minimum debt threshold to be declared bankrupt has been increased from RM50,000 to RM100,000. PM Anwar also announced that the Second Chance Policy will be expanded this year to cover bankrupts aged 40 and below with debts not exceeding RM200,000. Not to become a Madani cheerleader but what Putrajaya has done is huge — by redefining the technical definition of bankruptcy, more individuals have a second chance to reorganise their finances on their terms. Being bankrupt is brutal - all your assets will be transferred to a third party to clear your debts.

Shorts

1. The upper house of the Parliament, Dewan Negara has passed the Audit (Amendment) Bill 2024 which will enable the National Audit Department (NAD) to audit the accounts of any companies that receive financial guarantees from the federation or a state. The amendments also empower the auditor general to audit any entity that receives public funds.

2. About 26% of the 13.1 mil Employees Provident Fund (EPF) members under the age of 55 had withdrawn RM8.9 bil from their Flexible Account (Account 3) as of July 19. Finance Minister II Amir Hamzah Azizan told the Parliament that the RM8.9 bil withdrawals did not affect EPF as the amount is within the 2%-6% allocated by EPF towards cash and money market instruments.

3. Your boycott works as Nestle (Malaysia) Bhd recorded a 48.27% decline in its net profit to RM93.60 mil whilst revenue is down 13% to RM1.52 bil from RM1.75 bil year-on-year in the second quarter ended June 30, 2024 (2QFY2024). Nestle attributed the poor performance to a drop in domestic sales caused by ‘subdued’ consumer sentiment and ‘constrained’ purchasing power. View earnings here.

4. China Embassy Minister Counsellor Lin Shiguang said that Malaysia is one of the biggest winners among China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) trading partners, recording trade of more than USD100 bil for 1H2024 with China. With Malaysia planning to join BRICS, Malaysia is aligning closer and closer to its Eastern ‘ally’. We are entering a multipolar world with the decline of US hegemony,

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

Mother Earth on fever
In a single week, the record for the world’s hottest day was broken twice, according to the European climate change service. On Monday, the global average surface air temperature hit 17.15C, breaking the record a day earlier of 17.09C. This beats the record set in July 2023 and at this rate, this record-breaking will be a regular activity. Parts of the world are experiencing extreme heatwaves. Between 2000-2019, almost half a million heat-related deaths around the world occurred each year. 

Canada is currently experiencing a symptom of Mother Earth’s fever. Wildfire has spread through Jasper National Park, forcing 25,000 people to evacuate the area. The region has also been hit by more than 58,000 lightning strikes in the past week, sparking new blazes in the midst of a heatwave. The fire has grown so intense that weather experts said it is creating its own weather system and generating thunder and lightning, which can sometimes happen with intense blazes. 

Tree’s hidden superpower discovered by scientist
Amidst all the doom and gloom, scientists discovered a tree’s function as a methane sink, adding more reason to grow more trees. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is orders of magnitude more potent in trapping heat compared to carbon dioxide. The decade-long research found that tree barks contain microbes that can absorb methane. This could be a new nature-based climate solution, as soil is the only other known natural sink for methane on Earth. Tropical trees absorbed the most methane, probably due to methane-eating microbes thriving in warm conditions. The tree trunk doesn’t absorb methane evenly — the higher it is, the more effective it can absorb.
View research: Global atmospheric methane uptake by upland tree woody surfaces.

Business

• Alibaba: The Chinese tech giant made its 3 major AI deals this year as it participated in a RMB5 bil (USD691 mil) new financing round for Chinese AI startup Baichuan, valuing the company at RMB20 bil (USD2.8 bil). Baichuan also counts Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen governments as its investors alongside Tencent and Xiaomi. Founded in Apr 2023, Baichuan is a leader in the generative AI space in China and one of the first batch of Chinese firms to obtain Beijing’s approval for public rollout. Baichuan’s Chinese peers Minimax and Moonshot AI also saw their valuations surging above USD2 bil. 

• Apple: The Chinese love for their local brands keeps growing at the expense of Apple. Apple’s smartphone market share in China shrunk by 2% in Q2 2024 to 14%, falling from third to sixth place as competition intensifies from local rivals. China’s smartphone shipment rose by 10% in the quarter, with Vivo taking the lead (19%), followed by Oppo (16%), Honor (15%) and Huawei (15%). Huawei had a good quarter with shipments surging 41% and is estimated to ship more than 50 mil units in China this year. 

• Harley Davidson: The bike maker saw its profit rise by 23% in its second fiscal quarter to USD218 mil as revenue rose by 13% to USD1.35 bil as it benefitted from pent-up demand from riders waiting to trade into its newly launched 2024 Touring models. In Malaysia, a Harley Davidson costs from RM83,700 to RM355,900.
  View deck: Q2 2024 Results

Shorts

1. CrowdStrike: Here’s a USD10 voucher as an apology
   After causing a global IT outage that could cost Fortune 500 companies at least USD5.4 bil in damages, the cybersecurity firm offered its staff and firms they work with a USD10 UberEats voucher to apologise for the disruption they have caused. No surprise it received backlash over this gesture. AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes said the airlines affected should receive compensation, comparing the situation to passengers who would ask for refunds when airlines cancel their flights or experience delays. Hope he gets compensated with vouchers too, so he can empathise with the millions of his customers who received vouchers from him. 

2. Inside Out 2 - new achievement unlocked

   The sequel has become the highest-grossing animated film of all time and 13th  highest-grossing film of all time, just six weeks after it was released in cinemas, raking in USD1.46 bil globally and overtaking Frozen II’s record of USD1.45 bil in 2019. There’s a lot more upside for the movie as it is only just about to open in Japan. Good ROI there for Disney Pixar as the movie costs USD200 mil to make, excluding marketing. There are only 54 movies that have ever hit USD1 bil at the box office — check it out here.

3. Oil tanker capsized in Manila Bay, Philippines
   An oil tanker carrying 1.4 mil litres of industrial fuel has capsized off the coast of Manila, prompting fears of the country’s worst oil spill. The ship went down on Thursday morning amidst heavy rains and rough seas due to Typhoon Gaemi. Investigation is underway to determine if the sinking is related to the typhoon that flooded Manila and surrounding towns. 16 of the 17 crew members were rescued whilst one did not make it out alive. Efforts are on the way to plug the oil leak.

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

1. The Joker is such a tough role to play. The first Joker movie in 2021 grossed USD1.08 bil globally on a budget of just USD60 mil, making it the highest-grossing film in the R (Restricted) category.

2. Mark Zuckerberg’s latest interview with Bloomberg