Amazon UK Reported Record Sales Last Year

Amazon UK reported record sales of $8.3 billion last year.

Amazon Inc. is sustaining its market status as the reigning monarch of online American shopping despite of facing tough competition from local rivals. In recent times, the business of the company has grown substantially. It is not only about the online marketplace business but also for all other business categories that it has expanded into, such as Amazon Prime.

The online retail giant’s biggest markets are in the United States and United Kingdom. According to sources, the latter contributes a lot towards the company’s revenues and it has been a great revenue stream over the years. Sources suggest that the corporation generated massive revenues from the UK sales last year, which were estimated at $8.3 billion (£5.3 billion) after noticing an increase by 14% in 2014.

However, the online retailer paid very less in corporate taxes and thus received various handouts in government grants. The accounts filed in the US explained that the company’s sales in the United Kingdom were $7.3 billion (£4.49 billion) in 2013 and further rose by a staggering 14% in the following year.

Furthermore, the UK financial accounts of the company that were filed at the Companies House showcased the turnover for Amazon UK to be under $1068.7 million (£680 million) as the year ended on December 31, 2014. The UK turnover was also up by a substantial amount, as it was under $707 million (£450 million) in 2013.

One source stated, “The reason for the difference is because Amazon claims its Luxembourg European headquarters sells products to British customers through the Amazon.co.uk limited company and the UK figures instead refer to payments for its warehousing, distribution and administrative work, such as negotiating purchasing deals with book publishers, but not sales.”

Amazon’s UK financial accounts further showed an operating profit of $55.9 million (£35.6 million) in 2014 after experiencing a jump of nearly 95%. It was only $28.6 million (£18.2 million) in year before. In the same period, the company received a note in government grants of $2.83 million (£1.8 million) in 2014, which was nearly 12% to 13% higher than 2013.

It has been an ongoing practice from Amazon that they are paying less corporate taxes in recent years. UK sales of Amazon managed to make $8.3 billion and it will be liable to pay corporate taxes of nearly $18.7 million (£11.9 million).

The Guardian reported, “The accounts for Amazon.co.uk Limited show the UK business is continuing its rapid expansion. The document shows that 7,722 staff in warehouse, procurement, software and other roles were employed during the year, up from 5,912 in 2013.”

Twitter Will Soon Enter E Commerce Market

Twitter is all set to make its way in the e-commerce sector by launching 'buy' buttons on featured tweets and ads.

Twitter Inc. is miles behind Facebook in terms of users, revenues, and advertisers. The company is working to catch up or become better to be the market leader eventually. According to Market Watch, “Twitter Inc. is investing more resources in a visually-appealing e-commerce strategy it hopes will entice consumers to ditch the digital middleman and buy things directly off its platform.” 

Facebook has previously launched a few features that would give a touch of e-commerce business to its platform by adding buy, sell, and payments tool on groups and messenger. The microblogging social media network giant announced on Friday that it is testing product and a few collection pages that can be easily accessed from the main news feeds when a user scrolls his timeline. These collection or product pages will be live separately.

According to sources, all of the dedicated product pages will focus on a particular product, for instance a book, apparel, or a pair of sneakers. It will be listing highly sought details that will include price, product description, and more details from the retail website.

The company will also give an option to its users to buy a certain listed product right on Twitter. The micro blogging platform will also ‘host tweets from the general tweeting population as a source of user reviews.’

Market Watch reported, “The collection pages would be separate to that, gathering top products handpicked by celebrities and brands, and aligned in an almost Pinterest-like photo format. While the collection pages might not initially offer an option to buy like the product pages, Twitter said it will test increased functionality in the coming months.”

According to the website, it is believed that microblogging giant is preparing a product, which will be the combination of Amazon and Pinterest. The company is all set to create an immersive experience for online shoppers and give them a good online marketplace in the coming time. It is said that it is currently testing the buy button feature since September.

With the rising trend of e-commerce and online shopping, Facebook previously announced on many occasions that it would try to change its groups for people to do business there. Thus, it introduced buy and sell button on groups along with a recently launched payment feature on its messenger.

Now Twitter is said to be following the footsteps of Facebook and compete against it in this sector as well. The social giant should understand the level of struggle required to achieve this task.

Yahoo Launches Apps For Apple Watch

Yahoo has successfully launched four free apps for Apple Watch.

Yahoo Inc. is not stopping to expand its business on different platforms. According to sources, it is believed that the company has finally launched its app for Apple’s smart watch. The internet giant has designed four free apps for the Apple Watch, which it unveiled in Taiwan a few days ago. These four new apps include Yahoo News Hong Kong, Yahoo News Digest, Yahoo Weather, and Yahoo Sports Fantasy. All of these apps were developed in quite a simplified version so that they are compatible with the Apple Watch.

Yahoo seeks to make user experience better and it further hopes to provide an engaging and healthy user experience through these four apps. The senior director of product management at Yahoo, Fernando Delgado, stated that Apple Watch is one of the important platforms that have further motivated the company to believe and reimagine working on mobile services. He added in the press in Taipei that Apple Watch has made the company ponder over how to incorporate innovation in mobile technology.

It is believed that the senior director of product management says that he will be utilizing all the feedback from the users in order to make appropriate changes in the next edition of these apps that the company also plans to launch worldwide, including Taiwan.

According to BidnessETC, “Yahoo’s apps look to provide different types of information to users. Yahoo Weather provides morning updates and weather forecasts, and notifies users through the Apple Watch’s Glance feature. Users can use the Yahoo Sports Fantasy app to check what is happening in their leagues, and make changes in their team lineups. Yahoo News Digest updates users about the most important story of the hour.”

The users of Apple Watch, who are living in Hong Kong, can use the Yahoo News Hong Kong app in order to stay updated with all the breaking news and happenings, including top ten headlines of the hour. It is believed that the internet giant’s entry once again in the market of apps for smart watches is in line with its strategy of ‘mobile first’.

So far, it is believed that the strategy is working for the company. According to sources, Yahoo managed to generate GAAP revenue of nearly 61% year-on-year and brought it up to $234 million.

Apple Watch will be available to the masses in Taiwan on June 26. The manufacturer has not yet disclosed the prices but it is expected to come in all three versions.

UnitedHealth Funds Renovation Of Historic Minneapolis Apartments for the Homeless

This will convert the 100-year-old Stevens Square apartment building in Minneapolis into 19 affordable units for people without permanent housing.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH), as part of its corporate social responsibility supporting the healthcare system, has announced its intention to fund  the conversion of a century old Stevens Square apartment building in the Minneapolis area  into 19 affordable units for those who do not have permanent housing and are lurking around the streets with an uncertain future.

The healthcare company will kick in with almost $2 million in the form of equity out of the total estimated $3.40 million for the  renovation project, which is located at 1926 Third Ave. S. The so-called Lonoke building will be converted into a one-bedroom apartment with upgraded electrical and mechanical furnishings, which translates into new bathrooms and kitchens. The building will also get a new roof on top of other exterior roof improvements.

UnitedHealth Corp., the sponsor of the project, has selected Fredric’s Construction Co. based in Vadnais Heights to undertake the renovation work. Once it is completed, the ten apartments out of 19 will be offered to those who have been classified as long-term homeless, whereas the remaining nine will be offered to those who earn between 30-50% of the median income from the area.

Vice President of UnitedHealth Investment Management, Tom McGlinch, stated that the renovations will be completed later this year, and one which will prove to be critical in improving the healthy and emotional lives of the homeless people with the help of support services; some who may resort to crimes instead of something productive, though they will need some institutional and civic support for that.

The developer for this project will be St. Paul-based Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative, the company that purchased the building in 2005, whereas the St. Paul-based Common Bond Communities will be responsible for managing the properties. Their selection is being attributed to both of them winning the Best in Real Estate Award for the Riverview Apartment in Minneapolis.

United Health Corp. will not be alone in the financing though they will have the lion’s share of the equity investment. Loans worth more than million dollars combined will be priced by Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, the City of Minneapolis itself and from the Hennepin County (which will also provide a grant of around $65,000), whereas three quarters of $100,000 will be provided as grant from the Westminster Presbyterian Church as well as from Plymouth Congregational Church.

United Health Group stock price ended the day at $118.99, a rise of 0.80% from the previous day.

Costco Gears Itself For Perrysburg Debut

This will be the second store area store after two years of negotiating, planning, and building.

Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST) is all set to open its second area store in the area of Perrysburg, after two years of hectic negotiating and planning before it has finally brought it to construction.

The 154,300-square-foot store, which is located at the southeast corner of Dixie Highway and Eckel Junction Road, will open its door tomorrow. Currently, the store is replenished with hard and frozen food goods, along with a handful of perishables, and however, it is yet to be provided with freshly baked goods and with items that are produced on a more time sensitive basis. The store will also be lit with LED lighting and have more skylights than the ones at West Toledo, but will not have self-service checkout lanes that have impeded checkout instead of streamlining it.

The first store, which was opened in 2007, was deemed insufficient soon after the opening, while Costco decided that the opening of a second store was on the cards in 2013, which then kick started the negotiation drive.

Alex Leask, who is the assistant frontend manager, said that the intuition to open a second store was based on the community’s overwhelming response in terms of the sponsorships that have been sought by residents of Bowling Green and Findlay, as well as the number of applicants being more than the job openings.

Costco has been conducting a membership drive, which charges $55 annually, for the past several months, and has been donating items to local events to underscore its importance of playing an active part in the community.

Walt Churchill, who is the owner of Walt Churchill’s Market on Dixie Highway in Perrysburg, is bullish about the company’s presence by pointing out that it will bring a lot of traffic due to the excitement factor, which is gearing up the opening of the store. For others it is a matter of convenience. Wendy Brazeau travelled all the way from Holland to Maumee, and said that the location of the store is much convenient for her.

It is not bad for some businesses too. Scott Baughman, manager of public relations for Goodyear Auto Service, does not find Costco to be a competitor. He said that it stays focused on providing the best products at the best rate, on top of their brand and identity. To top it all, Sandy Latchem, executive director of the Perrysburg Area Chamber of Commerce, says that it gives consumers another option of shopping experience.

Costco stock price ended the day at $138.04, a decline of 0.01% from the previous day.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Appoints Greg Penner As New Chairman for Board Of Directors

Wal-Mart director Greg Penner has replaced Rob Walton as the new Chairman for the Board of Directors.

Wal-Mart Inc. will now have a Greg Penner as the new Board of Directors’ chairman. He is company’s owner Sam Walton’s grandson in law. He will be replacing Rob Walton, and will hold the position of BOD’s chairman of the largest retail company of the world.

Mr. Penner will take up the charge after serving the Wal-Mart board since 2008. The company announced this in its annual general meeting along with other top executives attending the session.

Wal-Mart established the stage for new board’s chairman ascent in 2014, when Mr. Penner was named to the latest formed Vice Chairman position. The founding associates, part of Walton family, presently holds almost half of Wal-Mart’s common stock. The believe that past experience of Penner in the tech sector will support the management of the company in the correct path as the retail chain is looking to renovate its e-commerce and emphasizes on small sized format of store.

Penner had previously been holding the chairman responsibility during the absence of Rob Walton. He became the part of the Walton’s family after he got married to Sam Walter granddaughter Carrie Walton Penner.

Before joining the Madrone, he was Wal-Mar Japanese operation’s chief financial officer also has the position of senior Vice President and Strategy for Wal-Mart’s e-commerce online platform, Walmart.com

Furthmore, he has also served numerous corporation namely, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as financial analyst, earlier in his career. Penner appointment as the Board chairman is effective after the announcement in annual general meeting; however Rob Walton will endure to work as a director in the board.

While talking at the meeting, Rob Walton said, “This transition demonstrates Wal-Mart’s commitment to long-term succession planning and keeping high caliber, capable leaders at the head of our company. Greg’s service to Wal-Mart spans more than 15 years, and during that time he has had a significant impact, both as an associate and as a Board member the past seven years. Greg has done an outstanding job as our Vice Chairman over the past year, and he has provided strong leadership and guidance as the Chairman of our Technology and ecommerce Committee since it was formed in 2011.”

The company’s executives are optimistic that Penner will bring all the expertise required to revamp the operations of the company. Walton added, “He brings an ideal blend of finance, technology and international business expertise – as well as a deep knowledge and love of Wal-Mart – to this role,”

Penner replies: “It would be impossible to overstate Rob Walton’s impact on Wal-Mart and how personally committed him has been over the years. I’m deeply honored to follow in his footsteps and recognize the deep responsibility I have to our associates, all shareholders and the Board.”

Why BP Plc Royal Dutch Shell plc. interested to invest In Iran

Foreign companies including Shell and BP have expressed interest in investing in as soon as sanctions are removed.

Since 1979, the United States has forced sanctions on Iran because of Islamic Revolution. International countries, due to that are not able to invest in Iran. However, the things are going to change in June, if America was able to enter a nuclear deal with Tehran. Foreign companies and investments are expected to come back to the country.

Energy companies of Europe such as BP plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc have shown their interest to invest in Iran, which has substantial oil & gas reserves attracting European countries. Iran has the 4^th biggest oil reserves, together with the second biggest gas reserves.

Bloomberg reported, CEO shell, Ben Van Beurdon in an interview at OPEC meeting said, : “Iran is a wonderful country with a fantastic resource base, as soon as there is legitimate opportunity, we will be looking at Iran. Everybody in the oil industry wants to go back to Iran once the international sanctions have been lifted.”

Patrick Pouyanne, CEO Total also showed interest to invest in the country. Following by a meeting with Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, oil minister of Iran, Mr. Pouyanne stated: “We like Iran”.  Because of the sanctions, the country has significantly suffered as it was deprived of any kind of foreign investments plus was unable to take advantage from the technical proficiencies that these international firms could have provided them.

Due to these sanctions, oil output of the country has dramatically decline. In 1974, Iran produced around 6 million barrels of oil per day; however it went down to 4 million barrels later in 2003. Currently, the country oil output stands at 2.8 million barrels per day. As per International Energy Agency, Iran badly requires some restoration

Mr. Zanganeh is profound to get foreign investments and specified that Tehran has attractive and a lot better to offer to these foreign companies. He said, “The new terms are long-term, with better situation, rather than the previous framework that we have.”

International investment by the firms will support the revival of oil and gas industry in the country. As pointed out by Mr. Zanganeh, Iran requires almost $200,000 billion of investment in the industry. Presently, Iran has not revealed any terms and regulation of the contract, but these are most likely to be more rewarding then the old contracts. Bloomberg reported, the latest contracts will help the foreign firms to acquire field production share.

While many firms had shown their interest to invest in Iran, however only when the sanctions will be lifted

Twitter To Use Heron For Production And Traffic Surges

Twitter will be employing Heron to replace Storm in order to improve manageability and productivity.

Twitter Inc. is the social media network giant that provides a micro blogging platform to its users. After posting poor results for the first quarter of the fiscal year, the company is currently focused on changing its strategies in order to get back in the business.

In order to increase manageability and production, it has decided to employ a relatively faster system, named as ‘Heron’. It is believed that the newly installed system will have the access to be fully compatible with the ‘Storm’, its previous system.

Twitter confirmed about its new system, ‘Heron’, in its official blog post, which stated, “the social networking platform processes a huge quantity of events each day. It is pertinent to note that analyzing all the events is cumbersome, and poses a massive challenge for the management”, reported BidnessETC.

Previously, the social network used Storm as its system that was required to do such analyses. This system was an open source that had a distributed stream computation. However, its only drawback was that it could not handle heavy traffic, as well as increasing number of accounts.

With time, the requirement of Twitter was increasing in terms of incremental traffic and users signing up daily on the platform. Consequently, a change was necessary in order to keep up with the growing pace of the market and employed Heron within its infrastructure to meet the growing demands of the social media network.

It is believed that Heron is an advanced system, which is installed on a platform that provides real time analytics details. It will also be compatible with API and the previous system as well.

The social network unveiled the new system at the SIGMOD 2015 event on Tuesday. The company stated about the qualities of recent system in its official blog post, “A real-time streaming system demands certain systemic qualities to analyze data at a large scale. Among other things, it needs to: process of billions of events per minute; have sub-second latency and predictable behavior at scale; in failure scenarios, have high data accuracy, resiliency under temporary traffic spikes and pipeline congestions; be easy to debug; and simple to deploy in a shared infrastructure.”

This recent development will prove to be quite beneficial for the company in order to keep up with the pace of its daily activities. It will help the organization to not only increase but also improve and bring betterment in its manageability and productivity. To be precise, Heron is miles ahead of Storm and is said to be 10 to 14 times stronger than the previous system.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Struggles To Keep Up With Pace Of iPhone 6

Irrespective of being the largest smartphone vendor of the world, Samsung still trails Apple in the market.

The rivalry between Samsung and Apple dates back to decades. The South Korean smartphone maker was recently named as the largest smartphone vendor in the world after it lost its major chunk of the market share to its rival in the past year. The year 2014 was certainly not a year for Samsung, where it continuously posted poor results that further led to a major decline in its customer base. Consequently, Apple was named as the uncrowned king of the industry, but so far this year and after just two months of its two new launches in the smartphone market, the company has regained what it lost.

It is known that company made a good comeback in the market. Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge are ‘modestly’ outselling its predecessor. If Galaxy S6 is compared to any previous models, it is well ahead in terms of sales in the market. The company managed to sell at least 305,000 S6 devices per day just after two months of its launch. Despite of having a staunch mark in the market, it has so far failed to keep up with the pace at which Apple is doing its business.

According to new figures from data tracker, Counterpoint Technology Market Research, it is believed that the new Samsung Galaxy models are still well behind Apple’s strong selling iPhone 6. As far as Hong Kong based Counterpoint is believed, the South Korean smartphone maker shipped around 10 million devices to different retailers and distributors through which at least 6 million were sold to the end user.

The data tracker said, “That was enough to top global sales of last year’s Galaxy S5 over the same period, but not enough to match the April performance of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Counterpoint didn’t specify how many handsets it estimates Apple sold in April.”

The spokeswoman of the company said that the two flagship products of Samsung are not only critically acclaimed but they are “are well accepted in the market and sustain the high demand since their market launches”.

She further said that the smartphone giant is currently looking to ramp up the production of its S6 Edge that will be contributing towards the immense growth of the company. However, she declined to give further information regarding the operation.

Apple launched its strong selling iPhone 6 in last fall, which is still said to be one of the most selling phones in the market, along with giving tough competition to Samsung’s new flagship products.

Boeing Co and Airbus Group expecting fresh orders in Paris Air Show

As Airbus and  Boeing  targeting to book “several hundred” aircraft orders at the Paris Air Show, lets take a look at the manufacturers progress so far with previous orders and demand for their commercial aircraft.

Boeing Co. and Airbus Group are going to attend the Paris Air Show from 15 to 21 June, and are optimistic of getting high amount of orders for their single aisle commercial airplane. Presently, Airbus has the most orders booking as compared to Boeing.

Fabrice Bregier, CEO of Airbus remains assertive regarding up-coming orders, as on Saturday he said that Airbus is most likely to get “several hundred” fresh orders, as reported by Reuters. Together with Boeing and Airbus, many other companies who make commercial aircrafts will go to attend the show. In fiscal year 2014, over 2,000 exhibitors were present in the show, whereas for FY15 it is most likely to cross 2,200 exhibitors.

Both Airbus and Boeing are in head to head competition in getting fresh orders. Airbus at the moment has around 209 total net orders compared to 134 Boeing order. However, Boeing has lately got 69 737 Max aircraft order for $6.1 billion from a carrier in China, which will be added to its overall net orders.

In FY13, Airbus got 466 orders valued at $68.7 billion for its aircraft, when Boeing Co. reserved an overall of 422 orders worth of $66 billion. Presently, both the companies have a substantial backlog that means any new order will need some time to get deliver.

However, with latest issues with the aircraft of Airbus, it is not clear if Mr. Bergier’s hopes from the Air show will come true or not. The latest Airbus A320NE0 model had technical problems during its test flight last week, because of which the testing was delayed. Sources close to the matter said that the problem occurs because of a problem in A32ONE0 engines made by Pratt & Whitney. But still, officials of the company are optimistic that the delay will not impact the deliveries of aircrafts.

Airbus is already facing problems in maintaining its jumbo A380 sales, due to decreasing demand from United States and Gulf Airlines. Earlier last month, the firm got an order for A380 from Emirates. Airbus is responsible for the delivery of almost 79 aircraft orders. While, Mr Bregier said that revamp of A380 is not their priority at the moment.

Airbus has been able to beat Boeing in terms of aircraft order, but has been falling behind when it comes to deliveries, as it has only delivered 196 aircrafts compared to 250 commercial aircrafts delivered by Boeing. However, Airbus has guaranteed shareholders that it will post an increase in year over year total deliveries.