This is DAYBREAK.Asia. We're counting down to Asia's majormarket opens. And, Heidi, U.S.markets shut for Memorial Day on Monday. So not a lead in from Wall Street, butstill, equity futures were telling us we can expect a little bit of upside in thesession today perhaps. Yeah, and it is that sort of combinationof stronger data that we've had. Of course, the inflation numbers, notjust from the U.S., but really globally this week will kind ofpaint a better picture of expectations from global central banks, including theFed, in terms of is it going to be.
Higher for longer and just how muchlonger before we get to easing? Yeah, the big question is when are theygoing to be ready to sort of shift away from their current policy settings?And something is what we track very closely, but for different reasons.In Japan, you've got the open here for Japan, South Korea and Australian.As you said at the start of the day. A few different things that we'retracking here this morning. Firstly, just some data to note.10 minutes ago we had Japan releasing IT services producer prices.We actually saw that outpacing expectations.So a rise of 2.8% versus the estimate.
For 2.3%.So again, still trending above the BOJ's inflation target.Yesterday we actually heard from the BOJ governor indicating later that they areopen 2 to 2 policy rate hikes in the months ahead.A question of when that could next be. But we do still see traders very muchagitating for that to happen because you've got the ten year yield here, forinstance, now above that 1% mark. So we're sitting at those levels wehaven't seen going back to 2012 Japanese yen, of course, stillreflecting those fundamentals between the BOJ and the Fed and you're tradingaround that 157 mark this morning.
What also tracking today is, is stocks.We've got those trending fairly steady so far in the session.As we said, US markets were shot Monday, but we did see European equity futuresmoving or European stocks moving higher intraday with the expectations that theECB could be looking to cut rates. The broader index as well flat so far.But let's take a look at what's happening this morning in Korea.Again, it's sort of some of the similar themes that we're keeping an eye ontoday. US futures again, fairly steady so far.One stock or group of stocks we're watching in particular is Hybe and someentertainment in Korea given we've got.
HIVE initiating a block trade of someentertainment shares and that that is actually coming at a discount too to theSM Entertainment last close Heidi. Take a look, though, when it comes towhat we try to do across Australian assets as well as U.S.treasuries that we're watching, this is a picture for the Aussie system.We are just less than 2 minutes into this out of the cash session.Right. And it is a staggered open.So unsurprisingly, not too much of a strong move.Either way. We are expecting muted gains, if youwill.
The Aussie dollar also seen pretty mutedgains, 66 of 57, one of the sort of China proxies that does well when we getsome decent news out of China. And we did both in terms of that bigchip investment announcement as well as the reaction that we saw in the dollarfrom the industrial profit numbers out of China as well.It did show that large Chinese industrials seeing some gains inearnings in April from a year earlier. So another sign of perhaps a nascentrecovery there, and that's boosting what has really been quite a bit of upside ofabout 2% in the month of May for the Aussie dollar.Taking a look at Treasuries, of course,.
As Bell mentioned, has been a prettymuted kind of holiday sessions that we're dealing with.But still, bond futures are kind of yielding inching up that we see acrosstrading at the moment as we saw that sort of pressure on Japanese ten yearnotes as as as as a result, as we saw, of course, the comments around the endof deflation from policymakers yesterday.And of course, one of the things we're watching is oil.And interestingly, Bell, despite some of the terrible really geopolitical andconflict related developments that we're seeing, oil kind of climbing just alittle bit on these tensions.
But of course, the key focus is stillthat Opec+ meeting and whether there will be, as expected, that extension ofthe policy settings. Yeah, Heidi.Let's get more on the market outlook in the session today, bringing GarfieldReynolds who leads our markets live Asia coverage.And Garfield, it seems like the stage is set a little bit, perhaps for a movehigh even though perhaps muted for for Asia today.Yeah, I think that's fair. You know, in a lot of ways we're stillkind of going on the momentum that was built at the end of last week, you'reseeing as yesterday was a holiday in the.
U.S.And so all we had was futures, which signaled that the, you know, the upsidemomentum was still there for U.S. stocks, even with some of the concernsabout both inflation and the Fed push backwhen it comes to early rate cuts. The environment for equities inparticular and even for bonds is still seen as being pretty reasonable.That soft landing hope remains in play. If it's not exactlythe famous Goldilocks environment, you know, it's it's fairly close.The Bears don't seem to be particularly close by.And there's also signs that the bears.
Are particularly hungry right now.So a modest, muted, you know, off path for high risk assetswith some concerns about commodities. Oil ticked up again, as you mentioned.We're also seeing London Metals up a bit, perhaps a sign that you at the endof last week or all last week, we saw most commodities come back down aftersome very big spikes that happened, you know, in the lead up to that.Looks like that now stabilized at about the levels they were before those spikeswhich are still elevated. Most of the uptrends are still in place.So that retains that concern. You know, that that is there, thateconomies are a little bit too strong.
And inflationary pressures are a littlebit too strong also for most central banks to relax.Gov. Are we also starting to see perhaps moreencouraging signs of improvement and certainly confidence out of China?Well, China also remains, you know, a little bit of an anxious spot.You know, the good news is that the data pulse does seem to have turned around abit. We had those industrial profitsreports yesterday. There's a lot of anticipation that thepremise that we get later this week will cement the idea that the Chinese economyis potentially gaining momentum and.
Certainly has sort of stopped losing it,as it were. So that's a positive.The other concern, though, is that the real estate sector repairing that is along and difficult path. And so there was a lot of there weresome very strong gains when the rescue package was first announced.And yeah, there's there are some doubts as to whether you really want to pile infrom here because you've had those strong gains.Can you get, you know, fresh, strong gains going forward?We need to see a trigger for that. Whether that comes fromactual easing, which is expected maybe.
Early next month or whether we see someserious progress on those efforts to relieve the glut in housing.Kathy Reynolds, who leads our Markets Live Asia coverage.And as we mentioned, one of the sort of positive market catalysts has been Chinaand its creation of the country's largest ever fund to boost thedevelopment of its domestic chip industry.And of course, all of this comes as Beijing looks to achieve techself-sufficiency to bypass intensifying US restrictions.Let's bring in our executive editor of Asia Technology, Peter Ostrum.And, you know, Peter, this, I suppose,.
Aptly named Big Fund three.It certainly is ambitious. I suppose it needs to be given that Ithink when we crunched the numbers, we've seen some $380 billion worth ofcommitments in pledges and earmarked funds by governments worldwide.Does this give China a significant leg up in terms of this tech supremacy warwhen there are such, you know, restrictions in place?Yeah, It's interesting to see how these government programs are rolling out indifferent countries. China, of course, has had a much moreproactive industrial policy for many, many years, including in thesemiconductor space.
They have a program made in China 2025,which was aimed at helping them make significant advances in a number ofdifferent areas, including biotech and electric vehicles and semiconductors.In addition to that, one of the key questions, though, was how sustainablethis was going to be, given some of the economic problems in China.As you alluded to, this is the third fund that's aimed at making investmentsin the semiconductor area where some of the economic challenges, including thehousing crisis. It wasn't exactly clear whether theywere going to be able to continue to fund very aggressively in thesemiconductor space.
So what we're hearing now is this 40this new big fund, three, which is roughly $48 billion, has been raised.It is going to be doled out. This signals very clearly that for XiJinping's administration, semiconductors remain a very, very high priority.And that's partly because the US has been getting increasingly restrictive inselling China the kinds of tools that they need to be able to develop the chipindustry and also to be able to get their hands on advanced chips like theA.I. chips from in video.They're used to train A.I. models so important for things in thefuture.
Peter, we haven't always seen those bigfund investments paying off in the past. There's been perhaps a bit of moneybeing misspent. We saw the former boss as well of thebig fund investigated for corruption and removed, of course, from his post.Do we understand how this money could be spent differently or do you think thatthat China's ironed out the issues that they've seen in the past?Yeah, you're exactly right. The big funds in the past have had someproblems, some challenges. The government, Beijing has not seen thekind of progress in some of the key areas that they like within thesemiconductor industry, despite much.
Money being spent in many of thesesectors. This is the, again, a Beijing acentralised fund. There's a lot of money being spent bythe local governments too. So there's a lot of money pouring intothese areas. Where we've seen progress is really theolder chip technologies, the legacy chip technologies.We're seeing a lot of fabs being built, a lot of progress being made withinChina to build that foundational layer. Also, the US has not put restrictions onsome of that older kind of equipment, older chip technology, but at the mostcutting edge, it's been a challenge for.
China.You see, as we saw in the market yesterday after this news was announced,you see some of the chip makers in China, including Smic in Hong Kong, makesome pretty significant increases in their share prices.There's a positive reaction there because investors anticipate thatBeijing is going to back these companies and they want to try to develop some ofthese more advanced technologies, especially seven nanometer, fivenanometer, maybe three nanometer and two nanometer chips, the kind of chips thatChina no longer can buy from the United States in many different cases,including the video chips that were talk.
To talking about NVIDIA has essentiallya monopoly on some of those chips that are needed to train the most A.I., mostadvanced artificial intelligence models that are out there.So that's a key area where they want to make some breakthroughs in Beijing.All right. Thanks, Peter.That was Peter Aylsham, the executive editor for Asia Technology from Tokyo.We're about 10 minutes into the session so far for trading.And some of the names we're looking at in particular today, we just saw linescrossing. Of course, that drop we've got for high.But the open here and some entertainment.
Has initiated a block trading, sellinghigh shares around 755,000 at a discount to the last closed prices.That's being reflected in that move you're seeing right now.What else we're tracking is Daiichi-sankyo.It's developing a drug in partnership with Astra, and we are showing that itsdrug has extended the lives of some cancer or lung patients, Lung cancerpatients, rather. That stock, though, little changed atthis point in time. Chip stocks ones to note as well, notjust for the the big fund investment that China has made.And we did actually see some Chinese.
Chip makers moving yesterday, but alsobecause we're hearing that Micron is building a new DRAM chip plant inHiroshima, that's according to local media outlet.Next, we are going back live to the UBS Asian Investment Conference in HongKong. We're going to be speaking exclusivelywith the bank's Asia Pacific. President will also be joined by theco-founder of Sensetime and the CEO of India's National Stock Exchange.So really big interviews coming up. We'll have much more ahead.This is Bloomberg. India decides.As the votes come in.
Can Prime Minister Modi win a thirdterm? And what direction will India take next?With a focus on the economy, social divisions and climate change actionsthat will influence the global story? Bloomberg's Haslinda Amin is live inDelhi, bringing you the latest updates as election results from the world'slargest democracy are revealed. Coverage starts June 3rd on BloombergTelevision. Context changes everything. Well, ABC is holding his inaugural AsianInvestment Conference in Hong Kong this week.Let's get back to the event.
Our China show co-anchor David Inglis isstanding by with his first guest today. Yeah, we're kicking things off here,Heidi, at the Four Seasons Hotel. And to our viewers, of course, joiningus across the world, thank you so much for joining us to get us warmed up.No better person, of course, from the bank.UBS Asia Pacific President Edmund Koch joins us here on sets at the FourSeasons. Good morning and thank you for having ushere. Morning, David.It's we were talking during the break coming in here.I was just getting off the car.
I knew I was going into the FourSeasons. It seemed I was going into a UBS office,though. How did you guys pull this off?Well, we are bringing more than 3000 investors from 28 countries to HongKong, and it matters to Hong Kong. It matters to us and to the participantsas well. So naturally, we want to put on a goodshow and to collaborate before seasons to convert the lobby to a UBS lobby.It's quite something, isn't it? Yeah, even I was surprised when I walkin on Sunday. So the team has done a fantastic job.So this was the flagship of your former.
Rival, now part at the bank, of course.Credit Suisse. 27 years.How are you guys going to make this one different?Because they set the bar quite high, I have to say.Yeah, I. I guess.You saying an inheritance? What you do with it is like the lobby.You polish it up and bring in keynote speakers like Sir John, the chiefexecutive of Hong Kong, the prime minister of Thailand, Streeter,obviously His Excellency. So what you want to do is to take yourinheritance and make it better.
And that's what we have done.And we are very proud of it, very proud of tradition, like a like a true wealthbank, as you would say. Take the inheritance and make it better.Yeah, the. I was looking at the agenda.It seems as if there is also a very big focus on technology.And is that something that the bank came up with?Is that something investors want to hear that you guys sort of unpack a littlebit? Well, the theme of the conference is aneye on the past and the view of the future.And if you look at the future trends.
Beyond the macro economics and politicaltrends, they are clearly trends on A.I.. There are clear trends on EDIS,etcetera. So what we try to do is to help ourclients navigate the future trends for investment.So it is absolutely important to have all such thematics in the next couple ofdays. Understood.The reason I also bring up that this was one of your rivals, Credit Suisse.Of course, Flagship is it's been a year. This, you know, this event reminds me ofevents this time I think quite literally going in soon.Yes.
The iteration of this, we don't evenknow if it was going through last year. How has the integration process gone 12months on? I think it's fantastic.I think the in any integration you go through, the important thing is yourclients and now clients have spoken and bought it for it.The net new assets have been going up twice.Continue to find more power in the two brands coming together for staff aswell. There will of course be some noise onduplication of roles etc. Most of this are all settled and takencare of and in fact, by the end of this.
Week, the two banks should muchofficially be quite apparent. Bank merger or PBM.We hope to cross that this Friday, actually.Okay. It's a days and not weeks.What was the retention rate? So both in clients, maybe assets, if yougive us some insights and also staff, of course, staff attrition rate bothvoluntary and involuntary, you know, was quite high.That's because of duplication of roles that we have eliminated.We also, of course, retain the best of both teams.So that's about done on client retention.
Has been very strong.I mean, we are managing in Asia alone in our 50 billion USD in EU, um, say undermanagement. That's just about the biggest in thewhole of Asia Pacific. If you dwell into wealth managementalone, our closest rival is less than half of our our total EU in.So overall I think the place I bought it bought it to stay, bought it to put inmore with us to manage in such events actually a testimonial to the success ofboth the brands. Right.I mean more than 3000 investors from around the world, 28countries.
Most are c-suites and more than 300corporates as well. So it's it speaks well for us.The I would ask you about the cost implications at a cost to income ratio.What am I called experiment is information on the wealth unit, maybebecause of some of the reductions in headcount fell from over 90% firstquarter, I believe down to about 67%. Yes.So is that a base that you want to hold in the sixties?Is that sustainable in your view? That's something that you want to hold.But I think it's not just about cost reduction.It's also about the top line growth,.
Right?We have seen top line growth quite strongly as well as our disciplineon cost. So I think both these are very importantelements. 60% is ideal and it's something which ofcourse through the cycles you would like to maintain as well.There are a lot of reports and conversations around headcountreduction. I'll ask you directly, are you stillcutting staff? It's it's a world that we are in that isvery difficult to predict in terms of macro trends as much as we try to do it.So we try not to.
Yeah, and like I was telling most of mycolleagues, the best ways to do your job and do it well enough so that, you know,we can lift the whole brain up together. Together we've got earnings andrevenues. That's the best way to save jobs.Right. So every organization out there, I'msure, is dwelling on the same topics. So we are no different.So you're still in the process? We try not to.We try not to try not to cut jobs. We try not to cut.But at some point, you know, every year you have got to cut because ofproductivity.
Right.Because of, you know, lower performance, etc..So on behalf of the shareholders as well, in the business, it's always rightto swap for better and more committed staff as well.So that's part of the process. And when you look across your businesslines, are there specific lines where you think there's still too muchheadcount? For example, are either parts of thebusiness equally where you think you might need to hire soon?We have optimized most we have optimized most of the position, both in terms oflines of business and the geography.
Itself.Okay. So you have to take into considerationcyclical trends in lines of business as well as the geography.I think for all of that, we are in 13 locations in Asia.For most of that, we have done okay. For most of that, you're done with.When do you expects activity to pick up, whether that's in markets or in wealth,which are obviously interconnected as well?Because, you know, it's been a very soft market for everybody has been strong forus. I can't speak for my competitors as towhy you're cutting them is because of.
The duplication of the coming together.It's been quite strong for us. Our clients are into into bonds.They are investing into the U.S. market for tech, for high techtechnology and in China, for the Internet industry is coming back.So overall, I am feeling more optimistic nowthan I was maybe last year when it all started.We are seeing a more upward swing right now for us.Okay. And in terms of just your geographicalfocus, are there specific markets you think grow more than most this year?Well, Hong Kong and Singapore continues.
To be a big hub for us.China, if you look at structural, still a bit more to go on the cyclical trendin China, it's strong consumer demand, export, etc..The built up is there for us,for our business in Australia as well is starting to pick up as well as inAustralia. We've had the Credit Suisse WealthManagement into our business, right? Right.We had two small ones in which we offloaded because it was more brokerageand now we are bringing it back in a big way.So I think a lot to go for us across the.
Region to work on it.What about India? Rebuilding India for us.Credit Suisse has a decent platform. We are building on it as we speak forwealth management as well as global markets and banking.So it's a good market for us. But still early days in India, still alot of heavy lifting to do. Okay.Final question for you. The just across the harbor from where weare, you guys are constructing this big. Yeah.Is a big building. When are you guys moving?Moving flats, as they say.
I hope earlier, David, but it looks likeit's 2026 and yes, there's enough room to accommodate everybody.As you know, we're in two locations now, IFC and ICC.Right. The two teams will match in 2026, and Iwas telling the developer I will still like a rooftop swimming pool.What is that for? You are the clients for all thesechildren. You know, I always believe in havingthat kind of activity for their children.So it keeps our employment tight and also our culture as well.So that's something which I it's on my.
Wish list.Okay. We look forward to the opening.And, you know, if we can take a dip in that pool, too.Edwin, thank you so much for. Thank you, David, for having us here atthe call. Edwin King, other guys, Asia Pacificpresident at UBS. Back to you guys.Heidi. No,thanks, Dave. Yeah, really great interview there.And of course, David Inglis at the UBS conference for us.We're going to be back in a few more.
Minutes with him.Really great interviews. Coming up, we've got the Sensetimeco-founder as you being. We're also going to be hearing fromIndia's stock exchange chief justice, our loins.So just stay tuned for those interviews. More ahead.This is Bloomberg. Take a look at how European futures areshaping up. And of course, it has been sort of a alittle bit of a wandering session globally, given we have had the closureof U.S. markets for Memorial Day.But we've seen a little bit of upside.
There when it comes to European stocksthat we had. ECB bill were talking about the conceptof consecutive cuts there from the European Central Bank.Official futures are looking a little bit positive.Both the dax and euro Stoxx 50 futures up by just about a 10th of 1%, which didsee cause some of these rate sensitive utilities the better performers of theday. This is bloomberg. With 80 minutes into the trading sessionso far this morning. And look, we're really not seeing toomuch movement across the board here.
We've got the broader gauge that'ssitting flat. And I was just taking a look at tradingvolumes as well. And we're pretty much off the 20 daymoving average, so thinner than usual. But why that is?Well, it really relates to to what we're expecting in terms of economic databecause we've got fresh inflation numbers that are going to be droppingfrom Australia to Japan, the euro region as well.We've seen some of those signals coming through.We've been hearing from the BOJ governor as well, just really wanting to get moreof a sense of whether we are seeing.
Those price pressures receding and andwhether that gives central banks then the scope to to think about moving orcutting their rates. So that's sort of the state of playright now. As you can see here, most equities notreally moving this much right now. But let's get back to the UBS AsianInvestment Conference that's starting today in Hong Kong.And our China show co-anchor David English is there with our next guest,Dave. Yeah.So, Bill, you know, we were discussing this earlier and I was, you know, whenyou when we did this curtain raiser at.
The events about 30 minutes back, you Iwas mentioning and the conversation we had earlier on with Adam Cole, I wasmentioning, it doesn't seem I mean, partly it's well, it feels like abanking conference first and foremost, because this four Seasons is effectivelydrowned in ub's branding. But apart from that, it really doesn'tseem when you look at the agenda that it is purely a banking and financeconference. There's really a strongbrush up technology as far as the conversations and the battle here goes.And certainly no one would be surprised that I and I certainly a very big topicof conversation, particularly around.
When you have geopolitics, of course, inchips and of course in just reported last week as well.So to talk us through this iteration in their context, joining us here on set.Yeah it's been true co-founder and executive director at sensetime.Good morning and thanks for your thanks for making time for us and coming comingon the show. Thank you for having me.You guys made big waves, I think, about five weeks ago.You did? Since November?Yep. That's the new.That's the new project.
Your stock price?Absolutely. Through the ceiling when thatannouncement was made. Can you provide us a little bit moreinformation on this? Yeah.Yes, happy to. So since Nova is our answer to Tad CBT,our answer to CBT four. So why we we are a company of ten yearold. We're not a new company.We started in 2014 with the help actually from a mediadonating 80 GPOs to us. We used to be the earliest Chineseresearch team that did a lot of paper on.
Deep learning and computer vision, andwe started a company in Hong Kong and theygo set up offices in Beijing, Shanghai, etc.So we list our company a little bit more than two years ago.Yep. It's beenit's been ten years for us. This year is our ten year anniversaryand we released our newest models to compete with the best models in theworld. And of course, we know thatthere will be a 25 or even DVD sets coming up.And we're also still trying to make the.
Usage of the resources that we have toremain catching up. So historically, during the past tenyears, we raised 6 billion USD in total in terms of capital.And we are big investment. We are actually a big investor in videochips, so we bought more than 40,000 video chips here in the past ten years.And we leverage that those chips to bring all kinds of models, computervision models, large language models, you know, efficient models to our forgenerating images and videos. So we're trying to, you know, put thosemodels into products and also really releases to the industries in Asianmarkets.
So you mentioned a couple of things.Let me pick up on your plans to monetize them, because the competition, as weknow, in China is quite fierce. Mm hmm.Do you have any specific targets for this specific aim?Or others? Yes.Yes. So firstly, we believe that the AIrepresents the future for the next decade or two.The one that having a leadership in technology will,you know, will be attracting a lot of customers to workwith them.
So I see that already in the US.A lot of customers working closely with leaders like Openai, like Anthropic.And I believe that in the Asian markets there will also be leaders as well.So we try to be that leader. But of course, there are shortage ofresources here in Asia in general, for instance, in a shortage of compute.Yeah, I think in general it's like a ten times of gap of the compute resourcesthat we have here compared to the U.S. leaders.But I think Asian markets never lack of talents and never lack of data.So in terms of talents and data, I think eventually we will also be able to, youknow, even though that we have lack of.
Compute, we are able to, you know, makesure that we squeeze the last beat up the company about that.Right. Yeah, Try to be there.That brings up the topic of and you mentioned you work with Nvidia.You invested a lot of course in buying in build your inventory.You know, of course of these restrictions that the U.S.has placed on China's access to some of these technologies.Is that a problem? Is that a problem for the secretary?Is it a problem for you? How were you working around that, forexample?.
And do you think that in any wayconstraints China's ability to meet its own objectives?I think firstly that. That does pose a challenge to everybody,not just the companies in China, but also companies in the U.S.You know, in China, we also do a lot of fundamental innovation.We also published a lot of papers. We do a lot of open source.See, the open source models that we released recently are open sourceversion of a multi modality model called the InternetWheel. Actually, it beats 24 hour week, so wejust open source it.
Now, we recently yesterday actually weopen source another one on a large network model that does really good ourmaths and it beats almost all the models.But on what metric. Well it's generic, you know, the test.The tests. Okay.Yeah. Okay.The benchmarks and the global benchmarks.So on the maths wise, we also beats almost all the models, but for allthey're really released recently. So we also does a lot of this opensource and we try to, you know, work.
With our global community.We try to share what we discover in that.J and I in EGA In general, I think that it poses a challenge to all of us, butindeed you know that there are also a lot of domestic chips coming up that arecatching up with the international leader, the chip makers really quickly.And we also what came is based on domestic chips, too, you know, stillexpanding the compute that we have. How far behind do you think the domesticchip sector is compared to the West? See?Put that to us in years, for example. Well, it's hard to say, actually.Hard to tell, because, you know, I.
Believe thatin the long run, there will there will be a smaller gap.Okay. Short term, right now, I think somebodysays one year something, somebody says to three years.But I think that's that's not the point. I believe that for a too long run.It's it's it's a thing that's going to be with us for the next decade or two.Right. So in that in that time frame, I believethat the computer is a commodity, right? Compute is a commodity.You always able to access access compute in different ways.It's just currently there is a challenge.
To that.But in the long run, I believe that company won't be a gap and the talentwill also not be a gap because as long as there's compute, talent will come andleverage that compute to develop AI and data.Here in China, I think it's broader and deeper in terms of the data resourcethat we have have here, because if you just use Internet data, you will youknow, it used up, it's finite. Yeah, it's you can use up the InternetDNA really very quickly. But the real world data demand is huge.And this modern model and there are so many data that's deep in the industryright now, you have to work closely with.
The industry leaders to, you know,really dig out those data as well. So I think in that sense, we can deep wecan actually dig and craft data better here in Asian markets.I have two more questions. And we're not we don't really have a lotof time. You know, we could spend all day here.When does your company start making money?Because you've so far been a public company for two years, your ten yearcompany. So far, you're you're burning throughmoney, cash included? Yes.Yes.
So we raised 6 billion and we weinvested like one third of that capital to R&D.Yeah. We have a team of more than 4000, andmost of them are actually researchers and engineers.And we also invested in our owninfrastructure since quarter. We invested it closely when it even morethan $1 billion to have such an energy, pure infrastructure to help to train.How about customers to help us to train the models as well?So I think that currently we still have a safe,you know, cash cushion.
Okay.And more importantly, we are, you know, transforming this company into aprofitable company in just 1 to 2 years. Okay.So that's what we are trying to do. I believe that as a least coal as alisted company becoming profitable will help us to run in these next one or twodecades long run, right. For generating AI for AGI.So to summarize, do you think it will be profitable next year?You don't see the need to raise capital at this point in time.I think your current valuation as a company is about 6 billion.That's US dollars.
How much do you think your company'sworth? I think there's a huge gap comparing tothe whites in the US. I just learned that I also raised 6billion just recently. You know, I think that the Asianmarkets, that's a huge market and the world needs a second option for export.And I believe that the US will do reallywell in leading the Asia development and China will also be a keep catching, keepcatching up with the US with all the talents and data we have.And I think that, you know, we're going to do fine in the long run globally.We're going to, you know, democracies to.
Access all the AI allow everybody willhave access to, you know, better and better technology so that theslogan of the company is very interesting because we started a companyten years ago. Yeah.And our slogan is to, you know. Well, because ten years ago we didn'tknow what's going to happen. Right.Right now. And so our slogan is called the jargonDon't you know, need relating to lead human development to withartificial intelligence. So it's hard to imagine that we come upwith that slogan ten years ago.
Yet here we are.It's almost like I predicted it. Thank you.Thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking the time tospeak again. We barely touched the surface there,Heidi. Sending it back to you, of course, isthe co-founder there of Sandstone Heidi. David Ingles.And of course, we'll have a lot more from day than from the UBS AsianInvestment Conference in Hong Kong, chatting with industry and businessleaders, including coming up, the National Stock Exchange of India CEO, aswell as a former IMF economic counselor.
Olivier Blanchard will be with us.This is Bloomberg. All right.Let's head back to the UBS Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong,where David is with our next guest. They run one of the world's largestexchanges, Dave. Yet to be more specific.Heidi DAX National Stock Exchange of India.Joining us here to see Ashish Kumar Chohan here, of course, at UBS one.It's nice to see you and good morning. Thank you.There are so many things I wanted to ask you about.First, let's get to the news.
You had an application recently whichdidn't get the thumbs up to extend trading hours.Are you going to revisit that application any time?Reapply. Reapply for that anytime soon?No. Currently we don't have plans becausethis is an ongoing process. And some point, India has to do whatwhat it does in terms of longer trading hours.But currently, probably brokers think it's the cost of resolving the benefitsthey get by appointing new people and things like that.That's where I think they are pursuing.
Some of those smaller brokers.And broadly, currently that process is stopped and we'll see what happens.Okay. Okay.So we'll take a step back from that on. I think it was another one on Friday.I think Sebi also came out with some guidelines.So effectively trying to ensure that someof the real time stock data doesn't get misused.You come to mind as a I wouldn't say a direct target of that, but, you know,you're certainly are affected by that. It does have a cost implication.Do you see that being disruptive in any.
Way to the trading operating rates?Basically, in India, the data is actually democratised, so actuallyexchange data. So we are supposed to give the data onactual websites and also the brokers get that enough free for their customers onreal time. So effectively what Sebi is trying to dois to ensure that the same data doesn't get misused for gaming outside of theexchanges and also manipulating people's minds and things like that.So that's where I think this regulation is more for stoppingillegal usage of data. Nothing to do withthe income of the exchange because.
Action is going to drive much income inIndia from data unlike other other countries.So broadly, it's more of a sort of a public good kind of.So so others outside the market, stakeholders don't have to worry.We're not even going to see any effects. They're not going to see, okay, how isthe market doing? Elections, post elections.You're smiling. Take us through what is going throughyour head. Markets are up even now at the all timehigh. But in a way, they could have beenslightly higher.
It's just that the market has taken outa sort of a buzzer of waiting for the election results to come and fix.I think six senses have gone. So one stage is the meaning of theelection. June one, it gets over.June 4th is the result so broadly. Next one week will be a little sideways.That's my current understanding. Okay.And, you know, that goes into one of I think you're speaking at a panel here atthe conference and you guys do very well as far as attracting retail investors.And if so, what do you guys think you're doing Well, and what are the bestpractices you think some of the other.
Exchanges in this part of the world cantake from that? I mean, in India is a large country and17% of world population, and it's highly digital country.The remotest corner of India, everyone has mobiles and smartphones and very,very nice bandwidth that are extremely low cost.So people are able to connect to us. We have now close to 95 million uniqueinvestors. They start with us.You need 95 million. Yes.I mean, if you were a country, we would be in top 20 or something like that.But effectively, a lot more people now.
Come in post COVID.When we were going into COVID, we had like 25 million unique investors and weare in 80 markets. So we know each investor, even theirphone numbers and their email I.D. So there are not many countries withthat kind of population in the world. And so we have a basically because ofautomation and also the growth, young people in India are earning more thantheir parents and the retirement age because of the way and that's come upand that's why they have more money to spend, but more money to save.And also their parents are investing in physical assets like land or property.And also now youngsters sort of invest.
In equities.So that's a I think, a good change that has happened.Financialization is now happening, formulation of finance is happening ofit all the high tech things like direct benefit transfers andsort of e-payments. They've also got more people in to thefor money Minister Right. So that's help the massive retail basethat you guys have. Do you think well, what will you think?Well, you could also give your take if you want to, based on the conversationsyou've had with brokers. Is the market expensive currently?20 times, let's say.
Yeah.Basically for me I've seen then the country grows.So you take Japan in the 1970s and eighties or even China for that matter.Europe when the countries grow, you may think because people actually discountthe future, not the past, what you see today.Why something is expensive or not. It's about yesterday's learning and tothis price is what the market is actually telling you, is that they arelooking at tomorrow's earnings and to this place.Right. So that's where the dichotomy for peoplelike me and you would want to invest.
You are not allowed to invest.We look at the Boston play to say that the future here looks a littleoverpriced by us. In the case of China, you can see it'sthe price of things is very low because people don't have a hope of our earningsgoing up. So that's when the prices play somethingto look. Look, earnings will be higher.They think that earnings will go down. But in this case, people think that itis going to go up. So countries and societies which have ahigher hopes of growth, those countries will our longer term base earningshigher.
The countries which do not have a futurehope of good growth, then their price earnings will be low.To clarify, what are you saying that China doesn't have a visible earningsgrowth story, which is why investors that investors think that means willcontinue to go down year on year and it cannot be like blip for a year, but likeon a ten year scale? Tony Gaskins That's what people there'sa premium being built in. Yes, it entered the market.I mean, I think you've been in Hong Kong at least twice in the last five or sixweeks, as I said at the other conference as well, which you who will go unnamed,I just want what's the sense you're.
Getting from investors here?Because it's the same group of investors that have taken money allocations fromChina cyclically and tactically, taking them to India and might be pulling thatout of India. Now that the Chinese market is startingto come out like China has in every last three years.Also China, China's kind of promised quite a lot and then ithas not performed because China is actually a much larger market in termsof the numbers. And each time people have, like Moscow,people had a feeling that there's going to be huge growth.We didn't come out and we are to lose.
Money.In a second part. I think people are worried about if theymake money will come out or will be allowed to come out or not.So that's also an issue. Well, as I met a few investorsyesterday, they also have some meetings. What they tell me is that post-electionsin India, a huge amount of I mean, there is a huge amount of money waiting tocome in. So it remains to be seen how both of usin both countries perform with China. What's the game?Should we look at it as, you know, a zero sum game?Can both market, you think, perform or.
Is it one over the other?There is enough and more money waiting in older countries because oldercountries are going to be older by age population.They don't see that kind of growth in bad economies.And so they are willing to invest in countries with expected higher growth.And that's where many of them are coming into younger countries.Mr. Chairman, I know you have a busy dayahead. We'll let you go.Thank you so much for joining us here. As usual, my challenge there, NSC IndiaCEO.
Bill, back to you.Thanks. That was David Inglis there.And we're going to have a lot more ahead from the UBS Asian Investment Conferencein Hong Kong. We're going to be speaking to a stellarlist of guests, including the former IMF economic counselor Olivier Blanchard andformer RBI governor Raghuram Rajan. I will have more ahead on DAYBREAK.Asia as well. This is Bloomberg. Taking a look at some of the movieshere. We're nearly one hour into the sessionso far and a couple standing out in.
Particular first.So you've got some entertainment is dropping here.We had high but actually that announced a block trade of some shares at adiscount to the last closed price. So that's being reflected in the movesyou're seeing here. Hype itself as well, a little bit underpressure so far. What else we're tracking is over inTokyo this morning. So you're seeing shares ofDaiichi-sankyo here. They are in focus today.We actually saw a drug that is developing in partnership with Astra,actually managed to extend the lives of.
Some lung cancer patients.But again, not being reflected so far, we're just seeing a little bit weaknessbroadly in equities today. Chip stocks, of course, one to note,because we've seen Micron, for instance, building a new DRAM chip planetHiroshima, that's according to local media.But of course, Chinese chip stocks, the other big focus when markets open inHong Kong and mainland China, we've already seen some of those chip makersmoving yesterday after Beijing announced its largest ever chip fund to propelthat event development of its domestic chip sector.
