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(Bloomberg) —

Nigeria’s central bank will halt the sale of foreign exchange to money changers to ease pressure on the nation’s currency, Governor Godwin Emefiele said.

The decision will end the sale of $5.72 billion annually by the central bank to the West African nation’s bureaus de change — a key source of foreign exchange for Nigerians traveling abroad and local businesses. The central bank will also stop issuing new licenses to currency-trading companies, whose number more than doubled to almost 5,500 over the past five years, Emefiele said at a virtual briefing Tuesday in the capital, Abuja.

Some bureaus de change have become “greedy” chasing higher profits and their demand for foreign currency is bringing pressure to bear on the naira and the nation’s reserves, Emefiele said. The central bank will only deal with commercial lenders going forward and all legitimate foreign-currency transactions will need to go through them. 

“We have noted with disappointment and grave concern that our bureau de change operators have abandoned the original objective of their establishment, which was to serve retail users who need $5,000 or less,” Emefiele said. “Instead, they have become wholesale dealers and illegally in foreign exchange to the tune of millions of dollars per transaction.”

Emefiele also announced plans to introduce by October a digital currency known as the e-naira, which will complement existing types of money and not replace it.

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(Bloomberg) — Cards Against Humanity LLC, the maker of the eponymous and tasteless-by-design party game, is exploring a potential sale, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Chicago-based company is working with an adviser, Moelis & Co., after it received takeover interest, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information was private.

The company is seeking to be valued at around $500 million in a transaction, the people added.

The company generates earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, of between $40 million to $50 million a year.

Cards Against Humanity hasn’t made a final decision on pursuing a sale and could decide to remain independent, the people said.

Representatives for the company and Moelis declined to comment.

Cards Against Humanity is seen as one of the biggest successes in the NSFW — not safe for work — category of card and board games. The creators of the game, after testing it on friends and family, relied on a 2010 Kickstarter campaign to raise the money to professionally print and box a proper version.

On its website, the company describes Cards Against Humanity as “a party game for horrible people,” adding “Unlike most of the party games you’ve played before, Cards Against Humanity is as despicable and awkward as you and your friends.”

One of its co-founders, Max Temkin, stepped down in June 2020 after reports of a toxic work environment, according to a statement on its website. Temkin no longer participates in the business but is still one of the owners of the company, which is run and controlled by its co-founders, a person familiar with the matter said.

The company said at the time it would hire a specialist to improve human resources, hiring and management practices at the company.

“As Cards Against Humanity rapidly grew from a hobby project in our parents’ basements to a company with 18 full-time employees, we made a lot of mistakes,” the statement said. “We want to apologize to employees who were unheard or disrespected in our office.”

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(Bloomberg) — More than 2,000 current and former Activision Blizzard Inc. employees have signed a letter calling the company’s responses to a recent discrimination lawsuit “abhorrent and insulting.”

The new letter, which was reviewed by Bloomberg, was circulated Monday following a turbulent week for the publisher behind games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

Last week, the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment filed an explosive lawsuit against Activision Blizzard that alleged sexual discrimination, harassment and retaliation. In response, a spokesman for the company called the allegations false and distorted. A subsequent email from Activision executive Frances Townsend described the suit’s claims as “factually incorrect, old and out of context.”

But dozens of current and former employees, particularly at the Irvine, California-based subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment, have come out on social media in support of the lawsuit’s claims and shared their own allegations of discrimination. Internally, some Blizzard employees have been fuming and pushing back against what they see as legitimate grievances against the company’s culture, according to employees who asked not to be identified. Activision Blizzard had 9,500 employees at the end of last year.

“Our company executives have claimed that actions will be taken to protect us, but in the face of legal action — and the troubling official responses that followed — we no longer trust that our leaders will place employee safety above their own interests,” the letter says. “To claim this is a ‘truly meritless and irresponsible lawsuit,’ while seeing so many current and former employees speak out about their own experiences regarding harassment and abuse, is simply unacceptable.”

The full letter:

To the Leaders of Activision Blizzard,

We, the undersigned, agree that the statements from Activision Blizzard, Inc. and their legal counsel regarding the DFEH lawsuit, as well as the subsequent internal statement from Frances Townsend, are abhorrent and insulting to all that we believe our company should stand for. To put it clearly and unequivocally, our values as employees are not accurately reflected in the words and actions of our leadership.

We believe these statements have damaged our ongoing quest for equality inside and outside of our industry. Categorizing the claims that have been made as “distorted, and in many cases false” creates a company atmosphere that disbelieves victims. It also casts doubt on our organizations’ ability to hold abusers accountable for their actions and foster a safe environment for victims to come forward in the future. These statements make it clear that our leadership is not putting our values first. Immediate corrections are needed from the highest level of our organization.Our company executives have claimed that actions will be taken to protect us, but in the face of legal action — and the troubling official responses that followed — we no longer trust that our leaders will place employee safety above their own interests. To claim this is a “truly meritless and irresponsible lawsuit,” while seeing so many current and former employees speak out about their own experiences regarding harassment and abuse, is simply unacceptable.

We call for official statements that recognize the seriousness of these allegations and demonstrate compassion for victims of harassment and assault. We call on Frances Townsend to stand by her word to step down as Executive Sponsor of the ABK Employee Women’s Network as a result of the damaging nature of her statement. We call on the executive leadership team to work with us on new and meaningful efforts that ensure employees — as well as our community — have a safe place to speak out and come forward.

We stand with all our friends, teammates, and colleagues, as well as the members of our dedicated community, who have experienced mistreatment or harassment of any kind. We will not be silenced, we will not stand aside, and we will not give up until the company we love is a workplace we can all feel proud to be a part of again. We will be the change.

(Updates the signatory count in the first paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) — Shopify Inc. is in a stratosphere that only one other Canadian company has reached before, passing $200 billion in stock market value last week. It’s a sign of the market’s upbeat view of its prospects — even as its growth rate begins to soften.

Shopify’s adjusted earnings are expected to slip to 98 cents a share in the second quarter, down 7% from the same period last year, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Revenue is forecast to break the $1 billion mark for the first time, rising 47% from the same period last year. But that’s still slower than the 86% full-year growth rate of 2020.

However, the company has a habit of beating analysts’ estimates — every quarter since it went public, in fact. And the recent surge of coronavirus cases connected to the delta variant is causing some investors to seek out stocks that do well in a lockdown, which is one reason Shopify is up 7% this month after an 18% rise in June.

“As the world reopens and consumer demand stays online, we believe merchants will only become more emboldened to improve online and omnichannel services,” Ygal Arounian, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc., wrote in a July 23 note to investors. “On top of which, the resurgence of the new Delta variant can keep shopping online for longer, and be another positive tailwind for ecommerce.”

The company’s growth accelerated with the onset of Covid-19, as retailers turned to it for sales software, online storefronts, help with marketing and shipping goods and even loans to deal with a massive shift to online buying. The outlook remains strong, Anurag Rana, senior industry analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote.

While smaller merchants are still seen as the main driver of growth over the next 12 months, adoption by large retailers will become increasingly important, according to Rana.

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

“Though tougher comparisons compared with 2Q20 will make its growth rates look weaker, we believe the new-merchant additions could provide a good base for robust gains in 2022. Shopify makes close to 90% of its revenue from North America and Europe, which are both highly vaccinated regions and are experiencing a strong economic recovery, including new employment.”

— Anurag Rana, senior industry analyst

Click here to read the research

In April, Shopify said an expected deceleration in revenue growth could happen later in 2021. Since then, vaccination efforts have allowed more retailers to reopen bricks-and-mortar locations but also boosted economic growth, swelling consumers’ wallets and lifting retail sales.

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein has also stressed that any pullback in growth may be countered, longer-term, by what the company believes is a permanent shift to e-commerce.

Shopify touched a record of $1,650 in New York trading on July 23 as analysts raised share price targets ahead of Wednesday’s earnings. The only Canadian company to surpass a market capitalization of $200 billion before was Nortel Networks Corp., which went bankrupt in 2009.

Roth Capital Partners is modeling for Shopify’s gross merchandise volume — the broadest measure of sales activity flowing through merchants on its platform — to grow 34% year-over-year but a survey of retailers suggests it could be up more than 50%, analyst Darren Aftahi wrote in a July 22 note.

Shopify has expanded its relationship with other online channels this year, allowing online sellers to reach customers on a wide swath of social media platforms and opening its e-commerce checkout system to retailers selling through Google and Facebook Inc.

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(Bloomberg) — Fireblocks has raised $310 million in a series D round that values the digital-asset platform at $2 billion, sealing its status as a unicorn.

The latest funding round is co-led by Sequoia Capital, Stripes Group, Spark Capital and Coatue Management, as well as DRW Venture Capital and SCB 10X, the venture arm of Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank Pcl. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and SVB Capital are among Fireblocks’ existing backers.

The Fireblocks platform allows for usage of digital assets in areas like payments, gaming and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. The firm’s technology can help financial institutions implement direct custody without having to rely on third parties. Its infrastructure has been used by over 500 institutions and secures more than $1 trillion in digital assets. It supports banks, crypto exchanges, lending desks, hedge funds and market makers such as Revolut, BlockFi, Celsius, Crypto.com and eToro.

“We have seen a certain maturity in the space and the development of projects utilizing blockchain technology that are outside of the crypto native arena,” Fireblocks’ Chief Executive Officer Michael Shaulov said. “We are working with a number of financial services firms around the world to expand use-cases regarding projects for digitization of currencies, securities and other real assets.”

Read more: Bank of New York Mellon Invests in Fintech Startup Fireblocks

The company plans to use the funds for hiring in areas such as research and development and customer support, as well as in sales and marketing to facilitate expansion in regions including Asia Pacific, Shaulov said. Fireblocks has also seen an uptick in demand given increased regulatory interest in digital assets, he said.

“As Thailand’s largest bank, we are looking forward to bringing Fireblocks’ solutions to future users in Southeast Asia,” said Mukaya Panich, chief venture and investment officer at SCB 10X.

(Adds link to previous investment.)

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(Bloomberg) — United Parcel Service Inc. fell the most in nine months on concern lower U.S. package volume is a sign the pandemic-fueled delivery boom may be cooling.

Average daily package volume in the U.S. fell 2.9% in the second quarter from a year earlier, UPS said Tuesday, even as an increase in the price per piece helped drive a 10% sales gain. International package volume fell 0.8% from a year earlier.

“Declining average daily volume and higher than expected unit costs are likely weighing on investor sentiment, with some reading the result as an indication the pandemic-driven demand trend is slowing,” Helane Becker, an analyst with Cowen Inc., wrote in a note after UPS’ earnings release.

The company’s shares sank 8.7% to $191.44 as of 9:57 a.m. in New York, the biggest intra-day drop since October 28. They’d advanced 25% this year through Monday, topping rival FedEx Corp.’s 15% gain and the 17% increase of a Standard & Poor’s index of U.S. industrial companies.

UPS’ average daily volume of shipments from businesses to homes in the second quarter fell 15.8% compared with a year ago.

The Atlanta-based courier and Fedex have seen profits soar from the rise of online shopping as Covid-19 accelerated a long-term consumer shift away from stores. But that trend may have peaked as consumers return to more brick-and-mortar shopping.

“As the economy re-opened, customers went back to those stores,” Chief Executive Officer Carol Tome said on a conference call with analysts. 

Higher Expectations

Shareholder expectations for UPS earnings have been rising along with package demand. In a presentation on June 9, Tome said the company’s operating margins would grow as high as 13.7% in 2023, while sales would rise at a 10%-a-year clip through that period. But that failed to impress investors as the shares fell the most in six months that day.

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says:

UPS’ mixed 2Q results drove earnings above expectations but may have tempered consensus for the year. International and Supply Chain Solutions offset the fact that Domestic failed to shine as bright as anticipated.

— Lee Klaskow and Adam Roszkowski, transportation industry analysts

Click here to read the research

For 2021, the full-year forecast for an operating margin of 12.7% that UPS announced Tuesday matched analyst estimates but undershot more buoyant first-half figures. 

“Broadly, we think the results were generally in line with buy-side expectations,” Allison Landry, an analyst with Credit Suisse AG, said in a research note. “This may not be enough.”

UPS’s adjusted earnings rose to $3.06 a share in the second quarter. Analysts had predicted $2.83. Sales advanced 14% to $23.4 billion, in line with estimates.

‘Better Not Bigger’

Tome, who took the helm just over a year ago, has emphasized her goal of making UPS “better not bigger.” In one move under her leadership, UPS sold its low-margin freight business this year. She also is focusing on serving smaller firms, which tend to pay full price for shipments, and discounting less to win large shippers.

UPS faces the challenge of lower profitability from its residential business, which typically involves fewer packages per stop than business deliveries.

Costs have also risen because of measures to protect workers from the coronavirus. In addition, Tome has ramped up spending to speed up deliveries, such as putting packages on express trucks instead of trains, to catch up with rival FedEx’s transit times.

While the hefty e-commerce demand may ease as vaccines allow people to return to stores, business packages will also increase as more workers head back to the office. At least through the next couple of years, package demand will outstrip couriers’ last-mile delivery capacity, Tome has said.

(Updates with opening shares in fourth paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) — Trading in Chinese education stocks listed in the U.S. started to show signs of a reprieve on Tuesday after a sharp two-day selloff wiped out billions in market value from the companies.

Shares of TAL Education Group and New Oriental Education & Technology Group — down nearly $20 billion in value in the past two trading sessions — each gained more than 10% in early trading. Other companies, including Meten EdtechX Education Group Ltd., Gaotu Techedu Inc. and China Online Education Group were also higher as of 9:40 a.m. in New York.

The rebound follows the worst two-day selloff in U.S.-listed companies in over a decade as regulators in Beijing unleashed sweeping policy changes on the technology, online education and property management sectors. Market across China slumped on Tuesday as rumors circulated that U.S. funds were dumping Chinese and Hong Kong assets, with analysts warning that gains may be short-lived.

“I think it’s kinda of a dead cat bounce,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co. “It’s way too early to be catching the falling knife,” he added.

As part of the latest crackdown, regulators banned foreign firms from acquiring or holding shares in school curriculum tutoring institutions, or using a variable interest entity (VIE) structure to do so — a VIE structure turns a Chinese company into a foreign one with shares that overseas investors can buy. Regulators added that anyone currently in violation of the new policy will need to rectify the situation.

“Under the new rules, the legitimacy of the listing status of certain players currently using the VIE structure, notably New Oriental and TAL Education, may be challenged,” according to CCB International Securities analyst Anita Chu.

Still Risky

Despite the rebound in education names on Tuesday, not everyone’s convinced the broader selloff in Chinese shares has abated.

“I expect the selloff in listed mainland companies in Hong Kong and the U.S. to continue for some time yet until we reach a level that international investors feel the now much-increased China regulatory risk is balanced by attractive enough valuations,”said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at Oanda.

The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index — which tracks 98 of China’s biggest firms listed in the U.S. — fell for a fourth straight day as tech-giants including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., JD.com Inc., and Baidu Inc. all declined by at least 2%. Stocks on the gauge have combined to lose more than $810 billion in value since it hit a record high in February.

(Adds analyst comment in third paragraph, and updates pricing throughout.)

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(Bloomberg) — Mastercard Inc. is looking to make it easier for consumers to buy, spend and hold cryptocurrencies.

Startups focused on crypto and digital assets will now be able to join Mastercard’s Start Path program, which gives fledgling companies access to the network’s executives and technology to help them grow, Mastercard said Tuesday in a statement. Seven crypto-focused startups have joined the program so far, including Uphold and Domain Money, which are building investment platforms for digital assets.

“We believe we can play a key role in digital assets, helping to shape the industry, and provide consumer protections and security,” Jess Turner, Mastercard’s executive vice president of new digital infrastructure and fintech, said in the statement. “Part of our role is to forge the future of cryptocurrency.”

Payments giants including Visa Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. have sought to take advantage of the frenzy in cryptocurrencies in recent months. Visa said earlier this month that cardholders have spent more than $1 billion on crypto-linked cards in the first six months of 2021.

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(Bloomberg) — U.K. media regulator Ofcom named Anna-Sophie Harling as its online safety principal, in charge of tackling disinformation and getting technology giants, including Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc., to show how they deal with harmful and illegal speech.

Harling is currently managing director for Europe at NewsGuard Technologies Inc., which audits online publishers for accuracy and has been critical of big tech’s response to fake news. She’s also on Ofcom’s content board, but will step down when she takes her new position next week. The regulator confirmed her appointment in response to questions from Bloomberg.

She’ll play a key role in Ofcom’s expanded remit after the U.K.’s proposed Online Safety Bill goes into effect later this year, pending approval. The legislation will compel Silicon Valley giants to share information about content on their platforms — a shift from the status quo where the companies provide it voluntarily — and aims to protect people from illegal and harmful content online.

As it stands, the bill will require digital platforms to limit and remove offending content, and give Ofcom the power to fine offenders as much as 10% of annual revenues. Harling will work alongside officials who will focus on other aspects of the bill, such as child safety.

Read More: U.K. Sets Out Sweeping Law to Curb Illegal and Harmful Content

Harling and NewsGuard have criticized Facebook’s attempts to curb misinformation in particular. She recently argued the long-running debate over whether former U.S. President Donald Trump should be banned from Facebook showed social media companies are “entirely incapable of regulating themselves,” in a May opinion article in the City AM newspaper.

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(Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. is ending some targeting advertising of its youngest users and adding some privacy protections amid scrutiny over the social network’s plan to launch an Instagram kids product.

Facebook will no longer let marketers show ads to people younger than 18 based on their interests or their activity on other apps and websites. Advertisers will still be able to target ads to young people based on age, gender and location, the company said Tuesday in a blog post. The changes, which are set to begin in a few weeks, will apply to Facebook’s main site, its photo-sharing app Instagram and its communication app Messenger, the company said.

Teens younger than 16 who join Instagram will be placed by default into private accounts, which let people control who sees or responds to their posts. Instagram users have to follow a private account to see its content.

The changes were announced while the Menlo Park, California-based company faces criticism over its plan to build an Instagram for kids younger than 13, who are currently barred from using the company’s regular platforms. Executives have said they want to give preteens access to most of the same features now offered on Instagram but with parental control and visibility.

Some lawmakers, state attorneys general and child welfare advocates have opposed the project, arguing the new app could contribute to depression, loneliness and anxiety in young users.

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