News In Brief

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Welcome to our ‘News In Brief’ column in which we digest all the news releases for you in no more than five paragraphs. Below are snippets of all the media releases that we received from March 14 till 20. Please check back throughout the week for more updates.

Fintel’s Short Interest Data For This Week

New York, March 14 Fintel.io, a provider of advanced research tools for data-driven investors, has developed a mathematical model that provides investors and traders with data that identifies the most-shorted stocks by ranking companies on a number of factors such as relative short interest, borrow fee rates, trading volume, and others. The Australian Short Interest Leaderboard provides a leaderboard ranking of companies with the highest short interest so traders can easily identify companies with the highest negative sentiment by institutional investors. The leaderboard is also useful for identifying potential short squeeze opportunities.

Below are the list of most-shorted Australian companies as of March 13, 2022 at 10:00pm ET:

• NHC / New Hope Corp Ltd. (97.89)
• CIM / Cimic Group Ltd. (97.13)
• LLC / Lendlease Corp, Ltd. (96.57)
• HVN / Harvey Norman Holdings, Ltd. (96.01)
• IEL / IDP Education, Ltd. (95.91)

Short Squeeze Scores scoring model ranges from 0 to 100, with 100 being most likely, relative to its peers. The Australian Short Squeeze Leaderboard also compiles data like Short Interest % Float, Change in Volume, Change in Price, and Borrow Fee Rate into an easy-to-use leaderboard for investors to reference when making decisions. 

ReverseAds Secures Funding From Choco Up

Singapore, March 14: Choco Up, Asia’s leading revenue-based financing and growth platform, has announced a US$600K funding partnership with leading keyword advertising technology start-up, ReverseAds.
Through Choco Up’s funding, ReverseAds will be accelerating its business growth in APAC, Europe and the United States – including opening the firm’s first office in Australia, ramping up research in product development, and expanding the team to support its accelerating growth.
The funding will also lead to the incorporation of blockchain technology as part of ReverseAds App’s ecosystem.
ReverseAds has won multiple industry awards in 2021 such as the Tech In Asia Startup Pitch, the Spark Ignite Thailand Startup Competition, the Spark Ignite Global Startup Competition, the TusPark WHA JumpStart China, and the Frontier Digital Technology sector award from SLINGSHOT 2021.
“The mission and vision of Choco Up are to help startups scale and grow by providing a better and more flexible funding solution as our investment allowed ReverseAds to acquire extra capital for growth without losing any equity and as a result of that, they can continue to grow the company and boost their metrics, while we invest in a startup with immense growth potential,” Choco Up co-founder and CEO Percy Hung said.

Expanding Mental Health Support 

Sydney, March 15: The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) has responded to record demand for its mental health and wellbeing support by expanding its specialist services to a greater number of sporting staff right across the country.
The AIS Mental Health Referral Network (MHRN) received 444 referrals in 2021, an increase of 68 per cent on the previous year’s record 264 referrals.
The AIS MHRN was established in 2018 and consists of more than 60 expert psychologists and mental health clinicians spread across every state and territory, all who understand the pressures and complexity of life in a high performance sport setting.
While it has primarily focused on helping past and present athletes, coaches, and high performance staff across Australia’s Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games sports, the AIS is now broadening that support to other staff members, such as office staff, at AIS-funded National Sporting Organisations.
“Importantly, this means that about 600 more staff in Australian sport will have access to free, confidential and potentially life-changing support services,” AIS Acting CEO Matti Clements said.

Reps At Competitions Confirmed

Kuala Lumpur, March 16: The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) notes the inability of the DPR Korea Football Association (DPRK FA)’s national age-group teams to compete in the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup India 2022 and FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Costa Rica 2022 respectively.
The AFC Women’s Football Committee at its third meeting held on October 14 last year had decided that in the unfortunate event of possible withdrawals from the respective FIFA competitions, the next highest ranked team from the respective qualification competitions would represent Asia accordingly.
Consequently, Australia, who finished fourth in the AFC U-19 Women’s Championship Thailand 2019, will replace DPR Korea and join Japan and Korea Republic as Asia’s three representatives at the upcoming FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Costa Rica 2022, which will be held from Aug 10 to 28.
Meanwhile, China PR, who finished third in the AFC U-16 Women’s Championship Thailand 2019, will join Japan and host India as the AFC’s three representatives at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup India 2022 scheduled to take place from Oct 11 to 30.

HKTDC MarketingPulse, eTailingPulse Opens 

Hong Kong, March 16: Asia’s premier marketing and e-tailing events, MarketingPulse and eTailingPulse, kicked off their two-day run today.
Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the two-in-one virtual forum has brought together more than 60 marketing executives, brand representatives, advertising elites and e-commerce experts from around the world to examine the latest global trends in marketing and e-commerce and share their success stories.
In her welcome remarks at MarketingPulse, Margaret Fong, Executive Director of the HKTDC, said the forum will demonstrate how brands can create value for customers, consumers, societies and the world and engender new marketing and e-tailing experiences.
More than 60 marketing chiefs, advertising elites and e-commerce experts have gathered at the forum to examine brand promotion and creative strategies and share practical marketing tactics.
The theme for this year’s conference is “Together, We Create.” 

AIS Program Targets Gender Diversity

Sydney, March 17: Former Australian cricketer Shelley Nitschke and two-time Olympic water polo representative Bec Rippon are among 32 women from 20 sports selected for the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Talent Program, which is designed to address the under-representation of women in coaching and executive roles in high performance sport.
Minister for Sport Richard Colbeck announced the 16 coaches and 16 executives who have been selected for the intensive Women Leaders in Sport (WLIS) professional development programs funded by the Australian Government’s Office for Women and Sport Australia.
The AIS Talent program has been designed to be a catalyst for identified women leaders to further progress their career potential in sport, this year with an emphasis on coaching and executive positions.
“We want the participants in this program to grow their leadership presence as individuals, but also to be influential in shifting mind-sets and behaviours in sport and broader community,” Colbeck said.
“The Australian Government has been strong and consistent in our approach to increasing opportunities for women and girls at all levels of sport, from participation in community sport through to the leaders running our organisations.

Choco Up Partners With Airwallex  

Singapore, March 17:  Choco Up, Asia’s leading revenue-based financing and growth platform, announces today its partnership with global fintech platform Airwallex, in a strategic partnership to support the future growth of cross-border ecommerce.
By combining Airwallex’s proprietary global payments infrastructure with Choco Up’s flexible recurring funding solutions, the partnership enables a comprehensive and integrated finance solution for e-commerce companies across Asia. 
This first of its kind, turnkey solution covers cross-border payments, collections, and growth funding, and addresses the needs that will enable e-commerce firms of all sizes to grow beyond geographical boundaries without financial constraints.
“The pandemic has propelled even faster growth of e-commerce companies over the past couple years, many who are in search of new funding and payments options to enable more sustained long-term growth regionally/internationally,” Brian Tsang, Co-founder and COO of Choco Up said.
“Partnering with Airwallex allows us to build a comprehensive hassle-free payment and funding infrastructure in Asia to empower these businesses to scale across borders without complications and co-create a better future for cross-border e-commerce in Asia.”

Carsome Acquires CarTimes Automobile

Kuala Lumpur, March 17 : Carsome Group has announced the acquisition of 51 per cent stake in CarTimes Automobile Pte Ltd (CarTimes).
Established in 2001, CarTimes is one of the largest and trusted, award-winning auto companies in Singapore, which offers a full suite of auto solutions ranging from new and used car retail, rental, financing, insurance to repair, maintenance and workshops. In alignment with Carsome’s mission of prioritising customers’ values, CarTimes built its business to ensure every customer can enjoy ultimate peace of mind at every step of the car transaction and ownership journey.
Carsome Co-founder and Group CEO Eric Cheng mentioned that CarTimes has built a strong brand in Singapore, trusted by local customers and partners since 2001, through a seamless car transaction process supported through a broad range of ancillary services such as financing and insurance.
“We are thrilled to announce the partnership with CarTimes, the team of which has over twenty years of experience in the auto industry,” Cheng said.
“This partnership will enable us to deepen our footprint in the Singapore auto market, and augment our ability in bringing trust, choice and transparency to customers together,” he said.

Padini Enters Into Partnership

Kuala Lumpur, March 17: XTS Technologies Sdn Bhd, a leading specialist in the design and build of factory automation solutions, and Huawei Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd (“Huawei”), a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Padini Dot Com Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of Padini Holdings Berhad for a warehouse automation solution using automated guided vehicles valued at RM1 million to be delivered within one year of a confirmed order.
Padini is a fashion retailer offering two multi-brand labels – Padini Concept Store with eight brands including Padini, Seed, Padini Authentics, PDI, P&Co, Miki, Vincci and Vincci Accessories, and Brands Outlet with outlets in malls across Malaysia as well as Cambodia, Indonesia, Bahrain, Brunei, Myanmar, Oman, Qatar, Thailand and United Arab Emirates.
The warehouse automation solution enables Padini to use AGVs of the reach truck type to assist in warehouse inbound and outbound picking of goods from the current manual system in which the reach truck driver needs to search for the required products on pallets from numerous racks in different locations in the warehouse.
With AGV reach trucks, data stored within the Huawei cloud storage system enables the automated reach trucks to accurately pinpoint where the goods are for picking, with the reach trucks able to navigate its way automatically in the warehouse.
“The AGVs will replace Padini’s two manual reach trucks and two drivers per floor in its warehouse operations which will mitigate the risks of human error as time is saved from having to search for the required pallets and there is less risk of goods and other properties being damaged. It is overall more efficient and with consistent outcomes,” XTS Managing Director Xteven Teoh said.

Tangerine Ranked Fastest Growing Company

Sydney, March 17: National NBN provider, Tangerine, has been ranked in the 2022 Financial Times and Nikkei Asia High-Growth Companies Asia-Pacific list for the second year in a row.
In an announcement today, Tangerine revealed it had ranked as the 22nd fastest growing company, which was a significant leap forward from its 39th ranking in 2021.
The Financial Times report ranks entrants by their compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue between 2017 and 2021.
Achieving high growth in two consecutive years is a testimony to the business’s successful challenger position in Australia’s competitive telco market.
Tangerine team CEO Andrew Branson had an extraordinary year in 2021 with a record number of customer acquisitions.

AFC Champions League Held In Buriram

Kuala Lumpur, March 18: The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has today confirmed that the AFC Champions League 2022 Group J centralised matches, scheduled to take place from April 16 to May 1, will be held in Buriram, Thailand.
Group J will be headlined by former semi-finalists Shanghai Port FC from China PR, Thailand’s Chiangrai United FC, Kitchee SC from Hong Kong and Japan’s Vissel Kobe.
The decision brings to a close the host selection process for the AFC Champions League 2022 Group Stage following the earlier announcements for the East region on Feb 16 as well as the West region on March 3.
Follow all the latest news and exclusive coverage of the AFC Champions League 2022 here.

Updates On Road to Qatar

Kuala Lumpur, March 19: FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) have confirmed that the AFC Asian Qualifiers – Road to Qatar Group A tie between Iraq and the United Arab Emirates scheduled for March 24 has been moved from the Al-Madina International Stadium in Baghdad to the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Following the latest incidents in Iraq as well as the broader shifts in global security in recent weeks, a reassessment of the safety and security situation in Iraq was performed jointly by FIFA and the AFC.
Based on the assessment, and to ensure the highest standards of safety and security for all the stakeholders involved, it was decided that the match should be moved to a neutral venue.
Iraq currently occupy fifth place in Group A after eight matches and will play their final Group A contest away against Syria on March 29 at the Rashid Stadium in Dubai, UAE.
Please click here for the latest news on the final two match days of the AFC Asian Qualifiers – Road to Qatar on March 24 and 29

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