Category: 3. Business

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France’s consumer watchdog has reported the Asian fast fashion giant Shein to authorities for selling “sex dolls with a childlike appearance” on its website.

The Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said the online description and categorisation of the dolls “makes it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content”.

Shein later told the BBC: “The products in question were immediately delisted as soon as we became aware of these serious issues.”

It said its team was “investigating how these listings circumvented our screening measures”. Shein is also “conducting a comprehensive review to identify and remove any similar items that may be listed on our marketplace by other third-party vendors”.

The DGCCRF has reported Shein to French prosecutors as well as Arcom, the country’s online and broadcasting regulator, according to French media.

The news has emerged just days before Shein is set to open its first permanent physical shop anywhere in the world – in a Parisian department store.

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JTEKT (TSE:6473) has caught the eye of investors following its very strong performance over the past month, with the stock up 7%. This run comes as the company’s fundamentals remain solid.

See our latest analysis for JTEKT.

This recent surge follows a broader upswing for JTEKT, as the company’s share price has gained 33% so far this year. The one-year total shareholder return stands at an impressive 53%. Momentum appears to be building, suggesting rising optimism around JTEKT’s growth prospects and underlying value.

If JTEKT’s pace has you curious about what else is making moves in the auto space, broaden your watchlist and discover See the full list for free.

But with JTEKT’s strong rally and impressive returns, the key question now is whether there is still room for upside or if recent gains mean the market has already priced in its future growth.

JTEKT is currently trading at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 25.1x, notably higher than both its industry peers and the broader market. The last close price was ¥1,549.5, which points towards a richer valuation than what is typical for similar companies in the auto components sector.

The price-to-earnings ratio reflects how much investors are willing to pay for each yen of earnings generated by the company. For auto sector firms, this multiple can highlight expectations around future growth, profitability, and risk profile. In JTEKT’s case, the elevated multiple suggests the market is pricing in strong anticipated earnings growth or rewarding the company for drivers possibly not yet reflected in its reported numbers.

Yet, when stacked directly against the peer group average of 13.6x and the Japanese auto components industry average of 11.6x, JTEKT appears significantly more expensive. However, the fair price-to-earnings ratio for JTEKT is estimated to be 26x. This hints that the current valuation is not significantly out of line with what the market may ultimately settle at over time.

Explore the SWS fair ratio for JTEKT

Result: Price-to-Earnings of 25.1x (OVERVALUED)

However, weaker revenue growth or a slowdown in net income gains could challenge the current investor optimism and affect JTEKT’s premium valuation outlook.

Find out about the key risks to this JTEKT narrative.

While JTEKT’s price-to-earnings ratio seems high, our DCF model tells a different story. According to this method, shares are trading nearly 70% below their estimated fair value. This suggests the market may be missing something significant or pricing in risk. Which side should investors trust?

Look into how the SWS DCF model arrives at its fair value.

Simply Wall St performs a discounted cash flow (DCF) on every stock in the world every day (check out JTEKT for example). We show the entire calculation in full. You can track the result in your watchlist or portfolio and be alerted when this changes, or use our stock screener to discover 831 undervalued stocks based on their cash flows. If you save a screener we even alert you when new companies match – so you never miss a potential opportunity.

If you want to dig into the numbers yourself or see the story differently, you can craft your own narrative and view things from a fresh angle. Do it your way

A great starting point for your JTEKT research is our analysis highlighting 2 key rewards and 2 important warning signs that could impact your investment decision.

You don’t want to miss your next standout opportunity. Take control by checking out stocks that match your interests and investing goals with these smart tools:

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include 6473.T.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

China has stopped importing U.S. coal, accounting for most of a 14% decline in U.S. coal exports so far this year, according to analysts and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week suggests trade progress. But whether it will include the U.S. coal industry is still uncertain.

“It’s hard to tell whether that’s just going to maintain the status quo or if that’s going to be an increase in exports of coal and soybeans to China,” coal analyst Seth Feaster with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said Friday.

Trump has been easing up on regulations and opening up mining on federal lands. The result has been to “keep our lights on, our economy strong, and America Energy Dominant,” Interior Department spokesperson Charlotte Taylor said in an e-mailed statement Friday.

The administration has also reduced royalty rates for coal extracted from federal lands and in September pledged $625 million to bolster coal power generation, including by recommissioning or modernizing old coal plants amid growing electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers.

Recent government coal lease sales in Montana, Wyoming and Utah, however, have failed to draw bids deemed acceptable by the Interior Department.

So far this year, U.S. coal production is up about 6%, due not to Trump policies but higher natural gas prices, Feaster said.

Meanwhile, coal exports fell 14% from January through September compared to the same time last year, according to an EIA report released Oct. 7.

The drop followed an additional Chinese tariff of 15% on U.S. coal in February and a 34% reciprocal Chinese tariff on imports from the U.S. in April, the EIA said in a report issued Friday.

The U.S. exports about one-fifth of the coal it produces. Most goes to India, the Netherlands, Japan, Brazil and South Korea.

China is not a top destination, taking in only about one-tenth of U.S. coal exports. But it has had an outsized effect on overall U.S. coal exports by halting all coal from the U.S. since April, said Andy Blumenfeld, a coal analyst at McCloskey by OPIS.

Almost three-quarters of U.S. coal exported to China last year was metallurgical coal used in steelmaking. The rest was thermal coal burned in power plants to produce electricity, according to Blumenfeld.

Nearly all U.S. metallurgical coal is mined in Appalachia, while the bulk of U.S. thermal coal comes from massive, open-pit mines in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana.

Appalachia would therefore benefit most from a resumption of U.S. coal exports to China, noted Blumenfeld by email.

“There is optimism,” Blumenfeld wrote. “But there is little documentation to back that up right now.”

Most coal headed for China last year went through Baltimore, with lesser amounts via the Norfolk, Virginia, area and Gulf of Mexico, according to Blumenfeld.

Relatively little thermal coal from the Western U.S. is exported due to the cost of hauling it by rail to the West Coast, where there has also been political resistance to building port facilities to export more coal.

• Significantly high institutional ownership implies PEXA Group’s stock price is sensitive to their trading actions

• 51% of the business is held by the top 6 shareholders

• Using data from analyst forecasts alongside ownership research, one can better assess the future performance of a company

We’ve found 21 US stocks that are forecast to pay a dividend yield of over 6% next year. See the full list for free.

To get a sense of who is truly in control of PEXA Group Limited (ASX:PXA), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. We can see that institutions own the lion’s share in the company with 50% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Because institutional owners have a huge pool of resources and liquidity, their investing decisions tend to carry a great deal of weight, especially with individual investors. Hence, having a considerable amount of institutional money invested in a company is often regarded as a desirable trait.

Let’s take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about PEXA Group.

View our latest analysis for PEXA Group

Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.

PEXA Group already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of PEXA Group, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. Hedge funds don’t have many shares in PEXA Group. Commonwealth Bank of Australia is currently the largest shareholder, with 24% of shares outstanding. With 6.5% and 5.5% of the shares outstanding respectively, Aware Super Pty Ltd and Apollo Global Management, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders.

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The White House issued a fact sheet on Saturday outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier this week by President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s largest economies.

Under the deal, China will issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of U.S. end users and their suppliers around the world,” the White House said, meaning the effective removal of controls China imposed in April 2025 and October 2022. The US and China previously said Beijing would suspend more restrictive controls announced in October 2025 for one year.

Washington will also pause some of Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs on China for an additional year and is halting plans to implement a 100% tariff on Chinese exports to the US that was threatened for November. The White House also said that the US will further extend the expiration of certain Section 301 tariff exclusions, currently due to expire on Nov. 29, 2025, until Nov. 10, 2026.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. 

The landmark summit between Trump and Xi, their first face-to-face meeting of the US president’s second term, saw the leaders stabilize relations in the short term after an escalating trade fight that had roiled markets and sparked fears of a global downturn.

Under their agreement, according to the White House, China agreed to pause sweeping controls on rare-earth magnets in exchange for a US agreement to roll back an expansion of curbs on Chinese companies. China had used its dominance in the processing of rare-earth minerals as leverage, threatening to restrict their flow to the US and allies countries.

The US also agreed to halve a fentanyl-related tariff to 10% from 20%, while Beijing will resume purchases of American soybeans and other agricultural products. The US has said China will buy 12 million metric tons of soybeans during the current season, and a minimum of 25 million metric tons a year for the next three years. Trump on Friday indicated he would like to remove all of the fentanyl-related tariffs if China continued to crack down on exports of the drug and precursor chemicals used to make it. 

Read more: Trump-Xi Truce Buys Time as Both Seek Leverage in Broader Fight

“As soon as we see that, we’ll get rid of the other 10%,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday. 

The US also said on Saturday that Beijing will take steps to allow the Chinese facilities of Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV to resume shipments, confirming a Bloomberg report from a day earlier. This move will likely ease worries about chip shipments that had threatened auto production as a trade fight between China and the US escalated.

But while the agreement has calmed tensions, the pact may be a short-term truce in an extended trade fight with the measures just meant to last one year. And despite addressing some key issues — and with both sides winning key concessions — the agreement fails to comprehensively address all of the issues at the heart of the US-China trade fight and other geopolitical flashpoints such as Taiwan and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Trump has signed off on a plan that would see an American consortium buy the US operations of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok app, but Beijing has yet to formally approve that sale. The US president has also said there would be cooperation on energy, saying that China had agreed to purchases oil and gas from Alaska.

In an episode of the Bg2 Pod that was posted on Friday, host Brad Gerstner, who is also the founder of Altimeter Capital, asked how the company could make financial commitments totaling $1.4 trillion when annual revenue is reportedly $13 billion.

“We’re doing well more revenue than that,” Altman replied.

OpenAI has announced massive AI infrastructure deals in recent weeks with companies like Nvidia, Broadcom and Oracle. That’s as other so-called AI hyperscalers like Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and top OpenAI investor Microsoft are collectively totaling hundreds of billions of dollars a year in capital expenditures.

While OpenAI continues to raise tens of billions of dollars from investors and generate billions more in revenue, Altman has also warned losses will persist.

And Microsoft’s latest quarterly results included a $4 billion charge that imply OpenAI lost $12 billion last quarter. OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

But on the Bg2 Pod, Altman quickly followed up his comment on OpenAI’s revenue with forceful pushback against those who doubt his company.

“We do plan for revenue to grow steeply. Revenue is growing steeply,” he said. “We are taking a forward bet that it’s going to continue to grow and that not only will ChatGPT keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing, that AI that can automate science [and] will create huge value.”

Altman added that one of the rare instances when being a publicly traded company would be appealing is when there’s an opportunity for short-sellers to lose big.

“I would love to tell them they could just short the stock, and I would love to see them get burned on that,” he said.

Still, Altman acknowledged OpenAI is taking a risk and could stumble, noting that if it doesn’t obtain enough computing capacity then revenue may fall short of forecasts.

But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who also appeared on the podcast, said OpenAI has exceeded all the business plans that he has seen.

“Everyone talks about all the success and the usage and what have you,” he said. “But even I’d say all up, the business execution has been just pretty unbelievable.”

Later in the conversation, Altman hinted at even more explosive revenue growth in the next few years.

Last year, sources told The New York Times that OpenAI predicted revenue would hit $100 billion by 2029.

While talking about the potential for OpenAI to go public in the coming years, Bg2 host Gerstner floated revenue estimates topping $100 billion a year in 2028 or 2029.

“How about ’27?” Altman interjected.