PM — Happy Halloween ????

Good afternoon, wonderful people. It’s a reasonably busy Monday here in Omm El Donia, with a little bit of everything coming out of the news cycle. But first…

We wanted to thank our friends at CIRA Education (formerly just CIRA), who join us today as a pillar sponsor of EnterprisePM alongside Palm Hills Developments and Etisalat Misr. It is through their generous support that we are able to continue to provide your afternoon reads without charge.

CIRA Education’s CEO Mohamed El Kalla joined us in the podcast studio to discuss the company’s recent rebranding and its evolution into a multifaceted education platform, with services covering the entire value chain of education. You can listen our discussion is on our website (listen, runtime: 44:43) or on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Omny | and Google Podcasts. Or you can read edited excerpts of our conversation here.

THE BIG STORY TODAY

Auto sales fell 49.8% y-o-y in September 2022 to around 11.4k units sold as the market continued to struggle with import restrictions. Passenger car sales dropped nearly 58.9% y-o-y last month to just 6.8k vehicles, according to figures provided by the Automotive Information Council (AMIC).

THE BIG STORY ABROAD

There are three big stories vying for attention in the international business press: Picking up where we left off this morning, left-wing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in Brazil’s presidential elections is still on the front pages of the Financial Times and Reuters. Meanwhile, Eurozone inflation jumped to a fresh record high of 10.7% in October (CNBC) and a grain shipment sailed out of a Ukrainian port today despite Russia pulling out of the UN-brokered agreement that allowed Ukraine to resume grain exports (Bloomberg | Reuters).

** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

• MoneyFellows closes bumper series B round: Egyptian fintech startup MoneyFellows has raised USD 31 mn in a series B funding round.
• House committee approves public-sector, pensioner bonuses: The House Manpower Committee approved yesterday disbursing a EGP 300 bonus in November to public-sector employees and pensioners.
• Coffee With Mohamed El Kalla, CEO of CIRA Education: Egypt’s largest listed private-sector education company, CIRA (Cairo for Investment and Real Estate Development) has officially rebranded itself as CIRA Education.

???? CIRCLE YOUR CALENDAR-

We’re starting a new month- The key news triggers as we slide towards November:

• PMI: We’ll know how Egypt’s private sector fared in October on Wednesday when S&P Global releases the purchasing managers’ index. A 22-month contraction in private sector activity didn’t show signs of abating in September as high inflation continued to weigh on demand and output.
• Foreign reserves figures for October will be released next week.
• Inflation: Capmas and the central bank will release October’s inflation figures on Thursday, 10 November.

The Sovereign Fund of Egypt (SFE) will begin the roadshow for its pre-IPO fund at the end of November, Planning Minister Hala El Said told Bloomberg Asharq yesterday (watch, runtime: 2:10). The fund plans to market several state companies — including the military-owned firms Safi and Wataniya — to strategic investors ahead of IPOing them on the EGX at a later date. Several Arab sovereign wealth funds have expressed interest in purchasing stakes in the companies, the minister said.

The Nebu Expo for Gold and Jewelry will be held on 10-12 December, bringing together 50 local companies and 35 international exhibitors from Italy, Turkey, India and the UAE, Supply Minister Ali El Moselhy said.

Check out our full calendar on the web for a comprehensive listing of upcoming news events, national holidays and news triggers.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- We’re in store for another sunny day in the capital city, with a daytime high of 26°C and a nighttime low of 18°C.

Biotech company begins first human trials on AI-created drugs: Verge, biotech firm backed by Merck, Eli Lilly, and private equity group BlackRock is running one of the first clinical trials in humans of a drug discovered by AI to analyze a vast database of brain tissue, according to a company statement. A patient was dosed with a novel therapy targeting ALS, a neurodegenerative disease with no known cure, Verge founder Alice Zhang told the Financial Times.

How AI discovers potential treatments: AI can process mass amounts of data to quickly identify the therapeutic targets of protein in the body linked to various diseases and which molecules can be turned into medicine. It also helps reduce typically high failure rates, development costs, and the time required for the medication to attain its approvals.

A growing sector worth potential bns: Verge raised USD 98 mn last year from investors to fund its ALS clinical trial and finance its expansions. It also signed an agreement with Eli Lilly to develop ALS treatments earning an additional USD 25 mn and potential milestone and royalty payments worth an extra USD 694 mn if certain targets are met. Pharma and investors see AI being worth USD 50 bn over the next decade, according to forecasts from Morgan Stanley, which forecasts an increase in early-stage drug development and the potential for up to 50 therapies over the next 10 years.

As a result of China’s one-child policy, the country is now facing a dangerous decline in births, Reuters reports. The controversial population control policy was in effect from 1980 to 2015, and now the number of new births is predicted to fall to less than 10 mn this year after seeing an 11.5% dip in 2020. A newlywed said in an online post (that has since been removed) she received a call from her local government asking if she was pregnant, leading many users to add their voices to the chorus, claiming to have received similar pressuring calls regarding pregnancy planning and when they were planning to have children. President Xi Jinping has previously announced that China would implement a policy to increase birth rates and enhance the nation's population growth plan.

Is investing an old man’s game? The ever-increasing cost of living and inflation paired with unfavorable market conditions has made investing a “tough sell” for young people, the Financial Times writes, citing investment service AJ Bell. The platform recently launched its user-friendly investing app Dodl targeting a younger customer base as the company aims to shift its focus from those investing in pensions to those saving up for retirement.

Egypt has jumped on the same bandwagon: Trading app Thndr, which accounted for 80% of all new brokerage accounts opened by those under 21 years old last year, is also working to harness younger investors with an easy-to-use method of investing.

???? ON THE TUBE TONIGHT-
(all times CLT)

The Little Things will give you Halloween thrills: This American neo-noir psychological crime thriller, starring Denzel Washington and Rami Malek, revolves around a serial killer investigation that unearths echoes from the past. Joe Deke is dispatched to Los Angeles for a quick evidence-gathering job but is sucked into an investigation by Jim Baxter, an LA Sheriff Department sergeant. Disturbing secrets are discovered as they search for the killer together.

⚽ Today in the Egyptian Premier League: Al-Ittihad will face Tala’e El-Gaish at 5pm, and the Arab Contractors will play Pharco at 7pm.

In La Liga: Elche will host Getafe at 10 pm.

???? OUT AND ABOUT-
(all times CLT)

Celebrate Halloween at the Goganian Armenian Club party tonight at 7:30pm.

Kick off the night at Cairo Jazz Club in Agouza with tunes spun by DJ Momo, Sebzz and A. Salah.

Catch Dabet Namla and Hardcase perform at Room Art Space in New Cairo at 9pm.

Cairo Jazz Festival 2022 is running until this Friday, 4 November at AUC Tahrir Cultural Center featuring a variety of events including live concerts, film screenings, jam sessions, jazz talks, and photo exhibitions from 14 countries.

???? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

Delve into psychological suspense with The Therapist: BA Paris’ novel follows Alice and Leo, a married couple, who relocate to a luxury gated neighborhood called The Circle — but quickly find out why the house was such a steal. As strange things begin to unfold, Alice becomes infatuated with the home’s former owner, Nina, developing a strong connection with her, and begins to suspect the neighbors who seem to be hiding things from her about the night Nina was murdered

The EGX30 rose 2.5% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 1.5 bn (29.6% above the 90-day average). Local investors were net sellers. The index is down 4.8% YTD.

In the green: Oriental Weavers (+7.5%), GB Auto (+6.6%) and Ezz Steel (+5.3%).

In the red: Rameda (-2.2%), Credit Agricole Egypt (-1.8%) and Egypt Kuwait Holding-EGP (-1.2%).

The future of smart devices: Imagine living or working in a space embedded with sensors that are equipped with mics and cams. The sensors are connected to one another through a central computing system, which picks up on your patterns and performs tasks on your behalf without any kind of prompting. From opening your curtains in the morning to placing an order from your favorite restaurant, or even gathering and analyzing research from online sources, this invisible butler would be by your side 24/7, anticipating your every need. This is called ambient computing — and some of the world’s biggest tech companies are working to make it a reality.

It’s not hard to imagine the benefits: Ambient computing would put the Internet of Things (IoT) to work for individuals, upping efficiency and leaving us to channel our time and energy to the things that we consider of most value, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But for computers to be ‘ambient,’ they need eyes and ears everywhere: We’d have to allow the technology to watch and track our every move, and listen to our conversations, in order for it to predict and perform tasks unprompted. The more features ambient computing masters, the more personal information and footage we’ll have to feed into the technology, leaving the question of how much privacy we are willing to give up in return for luxury and convenience. There’s already evidence that plenty of consumers aren’t comfortable with feeding personal information and footage to devices knowing that they could be hacked into at any time.

Ambient computing could also pose a safety risk: If your smart system misinterprets a situation or experiences a glitch, it could pose a real threat to users. Imagine your car putting itself into drive mode when you are parked, or misidentifying a face and opening your house door to a stranger.

Alexa fans won’t find this too groundbreaking: Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Nest are the closest thing we have to ambient computing for now, according to ZDNET. These voice assistants are integrated into the home — meaning they can “talk” to other smart devices you have installed — and can be activated handsfree, through voice alone. What they don’t yet do is collect data in order to anticipate what you want and do it for you before you think to ask.

Big Tech wants to corner the market: Amazon and Google have each released a stream of devices recently that they hope could one day form the hardware backbone of the ambient computing system in every home, the Wall Street Journal reports. These include smartphones, smart watches, tablets, headphones and TVs that can interact with each other and with the surrounding environment, creating a kind of personal computing bubble that follows us wherever we go.

Making ambient computing infrastructure universally compatible is key: Amazon, Apple, and Google parent Alphabet have all signed up to a new smart home standard dubbed the Matter. All devices that support the Matter protocol will be compatible with each other, opening up the possibility to mix and match smart home tech from different companies to build a seamless ambient computing environment. The Matter is getting an official launch this Thursday, 3 November.

But the next level of ambient computing will require way more powerful wireless: To reach the full potential of ambient computing, devices would need to receive continuous data from hundreds or even thousands of distinct communication points. That would overwhelm current wireless technologies. (Tiny but powerful microelectronic sensors known as “smart dust” could present part of the solution.)