Hyundai spells K-pop moment for Indian mkts
direction of its stock price movement in the first half of the year. “Hyundai Motor is expected to present a new plan to improve shareholder value in early June, utilizing increased cash flow for potential share buybacks or cancellations, which would further boost (return on equity). This increase in ROE would lead to a higher fair price-to-book ratio, strengthening the case for enhanced corporate value,” Meritz said in its report, written in Korean.
Hyundai’s India listing not only affirms its decision to double down on its operations in the country—which includes establishing a battery assembly factory and increasing production capacity via its buyout of General Motor’s factory in Talegaon, Pune—but also sets a precedent for other Korean companies seeking to expand their investor base and improve valuations through international listings.
Passenger vehicle makers attract rich valuations in India due to surging demand in the domestic market, particularly for premium models. Hyundai Motor India has effectively leveraged this consumer preference with its utility vehicles like Creta, Venue and Exter, which accounted for about 60% of its total domestic sales in FY24.
The India listing would also allow Hyundai to explore other value-unlocking measures such as exiting non-performing subsidiaries or non-core businesses. Hyundai Motor Co. trades at a significantly lower price-to-earnings ratio—5—as compared with other large Indian automakers.
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lphabet Inc.’s Google has fired 28 employees after they were involved in protests against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon.com Inc. to provide the Israeli government with AI and cloud services.
The protests, which were led by the No Tech for Apartheid organization, took place Tuesday across Google offices in New York City, Seattle, Sunnyvale and California. Protesters in New York and California staged a nearly 10-hour sit-in, with others documenting the action, including through a Twitch livestream. Nine of them were arrested Tuesday evening on trespassing charges.
Several workers involved in the protests, including those who were not directly engaged in the sit-in, received a message from the company’s Employee Relations group informing them that they had been put on leave. Google told the affected employees that it’s “keeping this matter as confidential as possible, only disclosing information on a need to know basis” in an email seen by Bloomberg .On Wednesday evening, the workers were informed they were being dismissed by the company, according to a statement from Google staff with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign.
Google representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The activist group said it had not heard directly from any Google executives in its three years of organizing against Project Nimbus.
Google has long favoured a culture of open debate, but employee activism in recent years has tested that commitment.
THE
Workers who organized a 2018 walkout over the company’s handling of sexual assault allegations said Google punished them for their activism. Four other workers alleged they were
protests took place across Google offices in New York City, Sunnyvale, Seattle & California
HOW EVENTS UNFOLDED PROTESTERS
in NY and California staged a nearly 10-hour sit-in, with others documenting it
fired for organizing opposition to Google’s work with federal Customs and Border Protection and for other workplace advocacy.
US labour law gives employees the right to engage in collective action related to working conditions. Tech workers will likely argue that this should grant them the ability to band together to object to how the tools they create are used, said John Logan, a professor of labour at San Francisco State University.
SEVERAL
workers involved in protests first got a message that they had been put on leave
ON
Wednesday evening, the workers were informed that they were being dismissed by the firm
“Tech workers are not like other kinds of workers,” he said. “You can make an argument in this case that having some sort of say or control or ability to protest about how their work product is being used is actually a sort of key issue.”
Tech companies like Google have a reputation for having “more egalitarian and very cosmopolitan work cultures, but when they encountered labor activism among their own workers, they actually responded in a sort of quite draconian way,” Logan added.
Two Googlers who were involved in the protest in California told Bloomberg that a group of workers gathered on the sixth floor of Google’s Sunnyvale bureau, where Cloud chief executive officer Thomas Kurian’s office is located, to show support for those who were staging the sit-in. Company security staff arrived and told the workers they weren’t allowed to record video or chant, according to the employees.
One worker said Google may have framed the move to place employees on leave as “confidential” to save face publicly, and argued that the protesters did not violate any company policies. The protesters left the building as soon as they were asked to and did not obstruct or disrupt others at the company, the person said.
Beyond the protest, Google has struggled with how to manage internal debate about the Middle East conflict. After the demonstration, posts on internal Google forums featured a mix of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli sentiment, with a number of other workers saying they felt the topic was inappropriate for the workplace, a Google employee said. Moderators locked down some threads on the subject, saying prior discussions had gotten too heated, the employee added.
Despite Google’s response, employees demonstrating against Project Nimbus have seen an uptick in support since the sit-in, said one of the fired workers.