Market climbs; Alternergy closes flat

By Jenniffer B. Austria

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STOCKS rose Friday, concluding a broadly healthy week on hopes that central banks around the world could be nearing the end of their interest rate hiking cycle.

The PSE index, the 30-company benchmark, rose 65 points, or 1.01 percent, to close at 6,602.17, as five of the six subsectors advanced.

The broader all-share index also went up by 23 points, or 0.69 percent, to settle

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at 3,516.72, on a value turnover of P4.68 billion. Gainers led losers, 102 to 82, while 43 issues were unchanged. Seven of the 10 most active stocks ended in the green, led by International Container Terminal Services Inc. which climbed 6.07 percent to P213.20 and Ayala Corp. which rose 5.05 percent to P666.00. Universal Rbina Corp. added 4.11 percent to finish at P146.80. Alternergy Holdings Corp., which held the first initial public offering this year, ended flat on its first trading day. Alternergy hit a high of P1.30 per share from its IPO price of P1.28, before turning flat at mid-day until the close of the market.

Alternergy president Gerry Magbanua said in a news briefing he is confident about the prospects of the company given its pipeline of projects and the positive impact of renewable energy.

“Our listing at the PSE is part of the continuing growth story of Alternergy. We are listing at the PSE against a backdrop of ongoing global uncertainties. But we believe these challenges are blurred by the lasting impact of building clean and sustainable energy projects for the next generation,” he said.

Alternergy raised P1.47 billion in proceeds from the sale of 1.15 billion primary shares and 115 million in overallotment shares. Post-IPO, Alternergy had a public float of 32.16 percent and market capitalization of P5 billion.

Consulting firm Accenture to cut 19,000 jobs in 18 months

NEW YORK, United States—Tech consultancy Accenture announced Thursday it will be cutting around 19,000 jobs, or 2.5 percent of its workforce, spread over the next 18 months, as part of a cost-cutting effort. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Dublin-headquartered company said it expects to incur $1.5 billion in costs as a result of the downsizing, including $1.2 billion directly related to the layoffs.

About half of the jobs lost are in administrative or support functions, not in areas that lead to billing of customers, the company said.

“While we continue to hire, especially to support our strategic growth priorities... we initiated actions to streamline our operations,” the company said in a release.

Accenture’s most recent annual report said it had 721,000 employees in 2022. The tech consulting and optimization company hired about 100,000 people in its 2022 fiscal year, which ended in August last year.

“We’re going after structural costs, right, to ensure that we’re in a better po- sition,” chief executive Julie Sweet said on an earnings call Thursday.

“We’ve been dealing with the difficult challenges of compounding wage inflation and we’ve been doing that with pricing but we’ve also been doing that with cost efficiencies and digitizing,” Sweet said.

According to Sweet, the move is part of a context in which “everyone does want to be optimizing costs,” especially in the technology sector, a major consumer of Accenture’s services, given the uncertainty associated with the economic situation.AFP