COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Tesla upgraded by MoodyMoody's upgraded Tesla Inc's debt rating by two notches to "Ba1" from "Ba3" on Monday, reflecting the ratings agency's expectations that the Elon Musk-led company will maintain its position as the leading battery electric vehicle manufacturer.Moody's affirmed in a note that Tesla's outlook remains positive and the company will continue to increase its scale rapidly and improve its profitability notably.Tesla's financial policy is likely to be prudent and liquidity would remain very good, Moody's said, adding that a more competitive offering of battery electric vehicles by other automakers could start to exert some pressure on the company's margins in 2023.In January, Tesla reported record quarterly deliveries that far exceeded Wall Street estimates, riding out global chip shortages as it ramped up China production. It was the sixth consecutive quarter that the world's most valuable automaker posted record deliveries.The ratings agency also anticipated that Tesla will deliver nearly 1.4 million vehicles in 2022, up from about 936 000 in 2021.-ReutersHyundai misses profit estimatesSouth Korea's Hyundai Motor Co reported a nearly 50% drop in quarterly profit on Tuesday, falling significantly short of analysts' estimate, hurt by rising raw material costs and a one-off expense associated with employees' bonuses.Hyundai Motor, which together with affiliate Kia Corp is among the world's top 10 automakers by sales, reported a net profit of 547 billion won (US$456.32 million) for October-December, versus 1.1 trillion won a year earlier.That compared with an average analyst forecast of 1.5 trillion won compiled by Refinitiv SmartEstimate.Analysts warn that soaring prices of raw materials, component shortages and logistical bottlenecks caused by the Covid-19 pandemic are likely to further drive-up costs in the current quarter."It's hard to find a commodity for which prices are not rising and the situation is not expected to change in the foreseeable future," Lee Jae-il, an analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities, said before the results were announced. -ReutersChina's Tencent fires 70 staffTencent Holdings, China's biggest social media and video games company, on Tuesday said it fired nearly 70 staff over bribery and embezzlement incidents last year and named 13 companies it had blacklisted from future contracts.Tencent said in a social media post that it had also reported more than 10 people to authorities over their actions.As the Chinese government has intensified a crackdown on corruption in recent years, tech companies have doubled down on their own investigations into irregularities as their valuations and profiles have soared following the country's tech boom.Tencent started its anti-graft campaign in 2019 and has been regularly reporting the results of its probes.In 2021, one case involved a former employee from its digital music department asking for and getting favours from its suppliers, Tencent said. Another involved a sports content staffer profiting from using a company he controlled to enter a deal with Tencent, the company added.Beijing, which has since last year reasserted control over its once-freewheeling internet sector through a wide-ranging regulatory crackdown, said last week it would investigate and punish any corrupt behaviour found behind internet platform monopolies. -ReutersAmazon discloses staff injury ratesAmazon.com Inc on Monday reported injury figures for 2020 showing worse-than-average safety rates in its US warehouses but a better record than peers in delivery.The online retailer also said staff injuries and illnesses globally that resulted in time away from work dropped by 43% in 2020, to 2.3 per 100 employees from 4.0 the prior year. Amazon has not reported worldwide incident figures before.The disclosures follow growing public scrutiny of the Seattle-based company's labour practices.Reports in recent years by Reveal from the Centre for Investigative Reporting and the Washington Post found serious injury rates at many Amazon facilities to be around double industry standards. Legislation has targeted employers like Amazon around the use of productivity quotas, and a US Labour Department office recently began auditing how the government has responded to rising warehouse injuries in the pandemic. -ReutersLogitech reports decline in salesLogitech International reported a 2% drop in third-quarter sales as the computer peripherals-maker lapped tough comparisons from a year earlier, when the pandemic boosted demand for its products.However, the maker of keyboards, mice and headsets raised its forecast for the current fiscal year to between 2% and 5% sales growth in constant currency, and between US$850 million and US$900 million in non-GAAP operating income.It had previously forecast flat sales growth, plus or minus 5%, and non-GAAP operating income of US$800 million to US$850 million.For the third quarter, sales fell to US$1.63 billion in the three months ending Dec. 2021. The company had posted quarterly sales of US$1.67 billion a year earlier, boosted by stay-at-home workers buying more keyboards, mice and webcams.The Swiss-American company, the first to manufacture and sell computer mice in the 1980s, said its non-GAAP operating income fell by 37% to US$302 million during the reported quarter. -Reuters

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