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Dividend Boost for AZN Shareholders
Ahead of a shareholder vote on whether to raise the salary of CEO Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca [AZN] has promised to increase its dividend this year. The UK pharma major said it would pay out $3.10 in 2024, 20 cents above the 2023 figure, saying that this underlined “the company’s confidence in its performance and cash generation”. The AZN share price is down more than 8% over the past year.
Copper Boom Imminent?
“You have a lot of renewables because you want to transition and you need to connect those renewables to the grid, and you need to improve the grid and that takes a lot of copper,” Bank of America Head of Global Commodities Francisco Blanch told Bloomberg Television earlier this week. The red metal hit a high of $4.334 in intraday trading Tuesday, its highest since January last year. Leading stocks Antofagasta [ANTO] and Southern Copper [SCCO] have both logged significant gains in recent weeks.
Meta Attempts to Reduce Nvidia Reliance
Meta [META] is to power its artificial intelligence (AI) services using a new homegrown chip, in a move intended to reduce its reliance on Nvidia [NVDA] products. Announced on Wednesday, the chip is the most recent version of the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator, or MTIA. “AI will be our biggest investment area in 2024,” Mark Zuckerberg told investors in October last year.
Can Adobe Catch Up with OpenAI?
The creative software leader [ADBE] is building a database of videos that it will use to train its AI text-to-video generator. The company is offering photographers and artists $120 for videos of people performing simple actions, such as walking, expressing emotions or interacting with objects, Bloomberg reported. OpenAI recently demonstrated its video-generation model Sora, prompting fears that Adobe may be left behind.
iPhone Spyware Attack
Apple [AAPL] has told users in India and 91 other countries that they may be victims of a “mercenary spyware attack”, having discovered that hackers were trying to “remotely compromise the iPhone”, Reuters reported. Elsewhere, the Cupertino company has been urged to take action on Vietnam’s detention of climate experts in a letter signed by more than 60 rights organisations; the country is a core manufacturing hub for Apple.
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