Electric vehicle (EV) company Ola Electric Mobility Limited has received an administrative warning from the markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), for violating disclosure norms.

The reason cited is that Ola Electric announced its e-scooter expansion plans first on social media instead of announcing it on the stock exchanges.

In an administrative warning, sent via email on January 7 for violating various sections of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, the regulator asked the EV firm to ensure "equal, timely, cost-efficient access to relevant information for all investors” via stock exchanges.

“By failing to first disseminate the information on the stock exchanges and instead announcing it on social media platforms, you have failed to provide equal and timely access to information to all investors,” read the SEBI warning.

Samsung Electronics on Wednesday estimated its fourth-quarter operating profit more than doubled from a year earlier but missed market expectations due to lacklustre performance in its high-end memory chips for artificial intelligence accelerators.

The world's biggest maker of memory chips expected an operating profit of 6.5 trillion won ($4.46 billion) for the three months ended in December, up from 2.82 trillion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

But the operating profit is 15.7 per cent lower than the average estimate based on a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of News Agency.

On-quarter, operating profit retreated 29.19 per cent from 9.18 trillion won.

Samsung's lower-than-expected operating figure comes amid prolonged delays in securing Nvidia Corp.'s approval for its high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for AI computing.

LG Electronics, South Korea's leading home appliance maker, on Wednesday estimated its fourth-quarter operating profit decreased more than 53 percent from a year earlier due to global economic uncertainties.

Operating profit for the three months ended in December dropped to an estimated 146.1 billion won ($100.7 million) from 312.5 billion won in the same period of 2023, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Sales, however, increased 0.2 per cent to 22.77 trillion won. The data for net earnings was not available, reports Yonhap news agency.

For the whole of 2024, LG Electronics said its operating profit likely decreased 6.1 percent on-year to 3.43 trillion won, while its sales climbed 6.7 percent to hit an all-time high of 87.74 trillion won.

As artificial intelligence (AI) diffusion accelerates across enterprises and society at a rate that is faster than any prior technology, 69 per cent of executives, including in India, believe it brings new urgency to reinvention and how technology systems and the processes it enables are designed, built and operated, a report showed on Tuesday.

The ‘Accenture Technology Vision 2025’ also predicted that AI will increasingly act as a technology development partner, a personal brand ambassador, power robotic bodies in the physical world, and foster a new symbiotic relationship with people to bring out the best in each other.

According to Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO, Accenture, unlocking the benefits of AI will only be possible if leaders seize the opportunity to inject and develop trust in its performance and outcomes in a systematic manner so businesses and people can unlock AI’s incredible possibilities.

Amid rising disposable incomes in an aspirational country, luxury car-maker BMW Group India on Tuesday said it achieved its best-ever annual car deliveries last year at 15,721 units with 11 per cent growth.

BMW Group India also crossed 3,000 EV deliveries till date, becoming the first luxury car manufacturer in the country to reach this milestone.

The company delivered 15,721 cars (BMW and MINI) and 8,301 motorcycles (BMW Motorrad) between January–December 2024.

BMW sold 15,012 units and MINI 709 units, the company said in a statement.

Adani Group shares saw a bullish trend on Tuesday, as buying was seen in almost all of the group's stocks, led by Adani Green Energy and Adani Power.

At 1.19 p.m., Adani Green Energy gained 2.47 per cent, Adani Power gained 2.33 per cent, and Adani Energy Solutions gained 1.96 per cent.

Apart from this, Adani Group's flagship company Adani Enterprises stock was up 1.72 per cent.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) stock is trading with a gain of 1.36 per cent and Adani Total Gas stock is up by about 0.3 per cent.

The number of LPG connections for household kitchens in the country has more than doubled to 32.83 crore, as of November 1, 2024, from 14.52 crore in 2014, according to the year-end review of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas released on Tuesday.

As many as 10.33 crore LPG connections have been released under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) for poor families who get the cooking gas at a subsidised price. Since the inception of the Scheme, about 222 crore LPG refills have been delivered to the PMUY households as about 13 lakh refills are being taken daily, according to the official statement.

A targeted subsidy of Rs. 300 per cylinder is being given to all Ujjwala beneficiaries.

"The Government's efforts have led to an uptick in LPG consumption by Ujjwala families. The per capita consumption in the number of 14.2 kg domestic LPG cylinders has gone up from 3.01 in 2019-20 to 3.95 in 2023-24. In the current year, which is still under progress, the per capita consumption has reached 4.34 (pro-rata basis refills till October 2024)," the statement explained.

Social media platform Meta on Monday moved the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging a recent Competition Commission of India (CCI) order imposing a Rs 213 crore penalty on the firm related to WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy update.

In November last year, the competition watchdog directed WhatsApp to not share user data collected on its platform with other Meta products or companies for advertising purposes for a period of five years, along with imposing a penalty of Rs 213.14 crore on Meta for allegedly abusing its dominant position.

Meta has now informed the NCLAT that the CCI order has wide ramifications for the industry as a whole and therefore, an urgent hearing in the matter will be required.

The case will now come up for a hearing before the appellate tribunal on January 16.

WhatsApp has more than 500 million monthly active users in the country.

IT major Infosys has reportedly deferred the annual salary hike in the fourth quarter of FY 2024-25. The company last implemented a salary hike in November 2023.

The delay in the salary hike, which is usually implemented at the beginning of the year, indicates that the domestic IT sector is still facing uncertainties.

The reason cited for slowdown is that clients are not increasing their IT spending due to macro-economic situations, including potential tariffs under the new Donald Trump administration that will begin working from January 20.

Not only Infosys but some other large IT companies like HCL Tech, LTI Mindtree and L&T Tech Services also did not increase salaries in the second quarter this year to manage costs and profits.

India's services sector growth rose to a 4-month high in December as robust demand boosted business activity with strong job creation taking place during the month, according to a survey released on Monday.

The HSBC India Services Purchasing Managers' Index, compiled by S&P Global, increased to 59.3 in December from 58.4 in November, which is the highest level since August.

Strong underlying demand was identified by companies as the primary factor behind output growth in the services sector. In some instances, survey members indicated that recent efforts to expand capacities allowed them to accept more work.