(Reuters) -AT&T said on Friday it has secured $850 million through the sale-leaseback of its underused central office facilities that house its legacy copper networks to real estate development firm Reign Capital.

The U.S. telecom major is planning to exit a majority of its copper network operations by 2029 as customers shift to newer technologies such as fiber optics and wireless networks, which offer superior speed and reliability and require a smaller space to operate.

Sale-leaseback is a financing option in which a company sells part of its assets to raise capital and leases back the same property to run its operations.

AT&T (NYSE:T) will lease back only the space required for its network operations.

“The uniquely structured deal unlocks value in otherwise stranded commercial real estate space,” said Michael Ford (NYSE:F), head of global real estate at AT&T.

The transaction, which closed in early January, includes asset transfer of 74 properties across the country, affecting only a small portion of AT&T’s portfolio of central offices and has no impact on jobs or changes in the services, the company said.

The Dallas, Texas-based company’s shares rose 0.7% in early trading.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s annual inflation rate slowed less than expected in early January, official data showed on Friday, cementing the likelihood that the central bank will hike interest rates by 100 basis points at its meeting next week.

Consumer prices as measured by the IPCA-15 index were up 4.5% in the year through mid-January, statistics agency IBGE said, slowing from 4.71% in the previous month but above the 4.36% expected by economists polled by Reuters.

Brazil’s central bank has been facing a challenging scenario marked by robust economic activity, a tight labor market and unanchored inflation expectations despite projections of a more aggressive rate path through this year.

Policymakers, vowing to pursue the central bank’s 3% inflation target, raised the benchmark interest rate by a full percentage point to 12.25% in December and signaled matching moves for the next two meetings.

“January’s IPCA-15 data won’t prompt the central bank to row back on the guidance provided at its last meeting,” Jason Tuvey, deputy chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients.

“Inflation remains firmly above the central bank’s target, the economy continues to hold up well and fiscal concerns have by no means gone away,” he said.

Prices were up 0.11% in the month to mid-January, according to IBGE, a deceleration from the 0.34% rise reported in the previous month but above the 0.03% decrease expected by economists in the Reuters poll.

The monthly reading was driven by higher food and transportation prices, the agency said, although lower housing costs helped offset the pressure due to a major drop in electricity prices.

Elevated food prices have been a concern for Brazil’s government lately, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva saying that finding ways to lower them should be a top priority.

“Inflation has rebounded significantly in recent months, with key leading indicators suggesting a poor near-term outlook,” said Andres Abadia, chief Latin America economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

“This implies that the central bank will continue to raise rates aggressively, by 100 bp (basis points), at upcoming meetings.”

(Reuters) -Meta Platforms plans to spend between $60 billion and $65 billion this year to build out AI infrastructure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday, joining a wave of Big Tech firms unveiling hefty investments to capitalize on the technology.

As part of the investment, Meta will build a more than 2-gigawatt data center that would be large enough to cover a significant part of Manhattan. The company — one of the largest customers of Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s coveted artificial intelligence chips — plans to end the year with more than 1.3 million graphics processors.

“This will be a defining year for AI,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook (NASDAQ:META) post. “This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business.”

Zuckerberg expects Meta’s AI assistant — available across its services, including Facebook and Instagram — to serve more than 1 billion people in 2025, while its open-source Llama 4 would become the “leading state-of-the-art model”.

Shares of the company were 1.6% higher in early trading.

Big technology companies have been investing tens of billions of dollars to develop AI-related infrastructure after the meteoric success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT highlighted the potential for the technology.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that OpenAI, SoftBank (TYO:9984) Group and Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) will form a venture called Stargate and invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States.

Earlier this month, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) said it was planning to invest about $80 billion in fiscal 2025 to develop data centers, while Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) has said its capital spending for 2025 would be higher than an estimated $75 billion in 2024.

Meta’s planned capital spending of up to $65 billion would mark a significant jump from its estimated capital spending of $38 billion to $40 billion for last year.

As part of the AI efforts, the company said it would build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to its research and design efforts. It will also continue to grow the teams working on AI services.

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. existing home sales increased to a 10-month high in December, but further gains are likely to be limited by elevated mortgage rates and house prices, which are keeping many prospective buyers on the sidelines.

Home sales rose 2.2% last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.24 million units, the highest level since February, the National Association of Realtors said on Friday.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast home resales would rise to a rate of 4.19 million units. Sales surged 9.3% on a year-on-year basis, the largest increase since June of 2021.

A total of 4.06 million previously owned houses were sold last year, the lowest number since 1995.

“Home sales in the final months of the year showed solid recovery despite elevated mortgage rates,” said Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s chief economist. “Job and wage gains, along with increased inventory, are positively impacting the market.”

A survey from mortgage finance agency Fannie Mae (OTC:FNMA) on Wednesday predicted weak existing home sales in the first half of the year, noting that “new homes are now priced competitively with existing homes and are far more available.” It forecast the popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage would average 6.7% in the first quarter and edge down to 6.6% in the second quarter.

Mortgage rates increased late last year in tandem with U.S. Treasury yields, which have jumped amid economic resilience, especially in the labor market, and investor worries that President Donald Trump’s plans for tax cuts, broad tariffs and mass deportations could fan inflation.

The Federal Reserve has scaled back its projected interest rate cuts for this year to only two from the four it estimated in September, when it launched its policy easing cycle. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is just below 7%.

Housing inventory fell 13.5% to 1.15 million units last month. Supply increased 16.2% from one year ago. The median existing home price shot up 6.0% from a year earlier to $404,400 in December, and hit a record high of $407,500 in 2024.

At December’s sales pace, it would take 3.3 months to exhaust the current inventory of existing homes, up from 3.1 months a year ago. A four-to-seven-month supply is viewed as a healthy balance between supply and demand.

Properties typically stayed on the market for 35 days in December, compared to 29 days a year ago. First-time buyers accounted for 31% of sales versus 29% a year ago. They made up a record low of 24% in 2024. Economists and realtors say a 40% share is needed for a robust housing market.

All-cash sales constituted 28% of transactions last month, down from 29% a year ago. Distressed sales, including foreclosures, represented only 2% of transactions, unchanged from last year.

By Harshita Mary Varghese

(Reuters) -Verizon Communications on Friday reported its best quarterly wireless subscriber growth in five years, fueled by robust demand for its customizable myPlan, Black Friday deals and trade-in offers for the AI-powered iPhone 16 series.

The strong growth sent its shares up about 1% and helped investors look past annual profit and free cash flow forecasts that were below Wall Street estimates.

Verizon (NYSE:VZ) has been pouring billions of dollars into the C-band spectrum, prized for its balance of speed and range, to improve its 5G offering and outpace rivals AT&T (NYSE:T) and T-Mobile.

The spending is also key to achieving the company’s goal of securing up to 9 million subscribers for the fixed wireless service by 2028.

On Friday, the company unveiled Verizon AI Connect, a set of products and solutions designed for businesses to manage artificial intelligence workloads at scale, as it looks to capitalize on growing use of the booming technology.

Verizon expects 2025 adjusted profit to grow between 0% and 3%, with the midpoint coming in below analysts’ estimates for growth of 2.7%, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Free cash flow, a metric that helps investors determine dividend, is expected to be between $17.5 billion and $18.5 billion this year. The midpoint was below estimates of $18.44 billion, according to Visible Alpha.

In October, Verizon projected capital spending for 2025 between $17.5 billion and $18.5 billion, compared with $17.1 billion in 2024.

In the fourth quarter, the company added 568,000 monthly bill-paying wireless subscribers, outpacing FactSet estimates of 487,500 additions. It benefited from price increases implemented in 2024 and the popularity of myPlan, which comes with streaming perks including Disney+, Hulu and Max at an extra cost.

“The wireless market is highly competitive, and Verizon has recently increased handset promotional activity and simplified pricing to attract and retain consumer subscribers,” said Dave Heger, communications services analyst at Edward Jones.

More than half of Verizon’s mobile customer base is on myPlan. 

Wireless equipment revenue grew about 1% to $7.5 billion in the fourth quarter thanks to higher device upgrade volumes. Overall revenue was $35.7 billion, slightly above estimates of $35.32 billion.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Euro zone banks need a digital euro to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to promote stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency typically pegged to the U.S. dollar, European Central Bank board member Piero Cipollone said on Friday.

Trump said he would “promote the development and growth of lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins worldwide” as part of a broader crypto strategy that he sketched out in an executive order issued on Thursday.

Cipollone said this would help lure even more customers away from banks and strengthen the case for the ECB to launch its own digital currency in response.

“I guess the key word here (in Trump’s executive order) is worldwide,” Cipollone told a conference in Frankfurt. “This solution, you all know, further disintermediates banks as they lose fees, they lose clients…That’s why we need a digital euro.”

Stablecoins work similarly to money market funds in that they offer exposure to short-term interest rates in an official currency – nearly always the U.S. dollar.

A digital euro, by contrast, would essentially be an online wallet guaranteed by the ECB but operated by companies such as banks.

It would allow people, even those who don’t have a bank account, to make payments. Holdings would likely be capped at a few thousand euros and not remunerated.

Banks have expressed concerns that a digital euro would empty their coffers as customers transfer some of their cash to the safety of an ECB-guaranteed wallet.

The euro zone’s central bank is currently experimenting with how a digital euro would work in practice. But it will only make a final decision on whether to launch it once European lawmakers approve legislation on the matter.

Trump’s executive order also prohibited the Federal Reserve from issuing its own central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Nigeria, Jamaica and the Bahamas have already launched digital currencies and a further 44 countries, including Russia, China, Australia and Brazil are running pilots, according to the Atlantic Council think tank.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian companies surveyed by the central bank expect inflation in 2025 of 10.7%, more than double the official forecast, and named labour shortages as one of the main factors stopping them expanding production, the central bank said on Friday.

It held interest rates at 21% in December, surprising the market which had been bracing for another hike to as high as 23%. Inflation in 2024 was the fourth highest rate in the last 15 years at 9.52%, compared to 7.42% in 2023 and well above the bank’s 4% target.

The central bank’s survey of almost 15,000 companies showed that businesses, when forming plans for 2025, accounted for annual inflation of 10.7% on average.

Credit conditions remained tight in January, the report said, and the central bank said it would take elevated inflation expectations into account when it next meets to set rates on Feb. 14.

Companies’ expectations for the change in prices of their goods over the coming three months remained steady in January after rising for four consecutive months, the survey showed.

The central bank also said that its business climate indicator was at its lowest monthly level in January for two years.

By Rodrigo Campos

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Foreign investors added $273.5 billion to their emerging market equity and debt portfolios last year, nearly $100 billion more than in 2023, according to a bank trade group’s preliminary data published on Friday.

The $273.5 billion of inflows for 2024 topped the $177.4 billion in 2023 though it was below the $375 billion average between 2019-2021, according to the report from the Institute of International Finance.

Almost all the inflow was money put into fixed income last year with $219 billion added to debt outside China and $54.2 billion to Chinese debt. The picture was more split in stocks, where Chinese equities raked in $11.3 billion while those elsewhere in the developing economies world lost $11 billion, the data show.

U.S. growth and the strength of the dollar were headwinds to investing in emerging markets most of the year, and the Federal Reserve itself has downgraded its expectations for rate cuts in 2025 – which in turn provides yet more support to the dollar.

Signs of a looser monetary policy in the U.S. would be supportive of EM assets in general.

“Throughout 2024, the strong dollar and elevated U.S. yields created significant headwinds for EM equities and certain debt markets, a trend that may reverse if the Fed begins signaling rate cuts in the coming months,” said IIF economist Jonathan Fortun in a statement.

“While Fed dovishness would provide a much-needed tailwind, sustained recovery in EM equities will likely require further clarity on global growth prospects and targeted policy measures in key markets like China,” he said.

JPMorgan warned on Thursday of a sudden stop of flows to emerging markets as a strong U.S. economy keeps investors away from developing nations seen as riskier.

Yet idiosyncrasies will continue to dictate flows, as seen by equity inflows in December to India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan.

The breakdown of IIF data by month showed non-residents added a net $14.4 billion to emerging market portfolios in December, with stocks posting net overall outflows.

Regionally, Latin America led inflows with $6.6 billion followed by Emerging Asia with $5.3 billion, while Africa and the Middle East, and Emerging Europe pulled in $1.7 billion and $1.1 billion respectively.

By Gabriel Burin

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Brazil’s central bank will raise its benchmark interest rate by 100 basis points on Jan. 29, with more to increases follow, taking the cost of borrowing to the highest in nearly two decades by mid-year, a Reuters poll showed.

The expected increase on Wednesday, firmly signalled by policymakers in recent weeks, would be Banco Central do Brasil’s (BCB) second full percentage point rise after it surprised the markets in December with an increase of that size.

As concern mounts in many countries over inflation, Brazil’s rates are now expected to end significantly higher than thought just once month ago.

This month’s decision will be the first under newly-appointed bank governor Gabriel Galipolo, who faces rising domestic challenges as well as heightened global volatility.

Brazilian policymakers, known as Copom, are expected to raise the benchmark Selic by 100 basis points more to 13.25% from 12.25% on Jan. 29 in view of inflation expectations, according to the median estimate of 38 economists polled Jan. 21-24.

Apart from its importance to Latin America’s No.1 economy, Brazil’s Selic has gained relevance as a guide for global monetary policy trends, potentially giving an indication of the future direction of U.S. rates.

The BCB first hiked the Selic in March 2021 from a low during the pandemic, preceding a similar shift in the United States by a year. Then, it began easing in August 2023 – again, a little more than a year ahead of the start of the Federal Reserve’s latest rate cuts.

THIRD 100 BPS INCREMENT EXPECTED

All 30 economists who answered extra questions on the bank’s next move said they expected a third 100 basis points increment in March to 14.25%, the highest since Sept. 2016. No Copom meeting is scheduled in February.

“BCB has already made clear in its guidance the need to raise the Selic rate by at least another 200 basis points, with 100 basis points coming at the January meeting and 100 more in March,” said Tomas Goulart, economist at Novus Capital.

The median forecast from the poll shows the Selic rate peaking at 15.00% next quarter. That would be the highest since June 2006, when it stood at 15.25%.

In a December poll, the Selic had been expected to peak at 13.50% in the second quarter, slightly below its 2023 peak of 13.75%.

Consumer prices in Brazil are forecast to rise an annual 5.08% at the end of 2025 in the latest weekly survey by the central bank among private economists, advancing further above an official inflation target of 3% +/- 1.5 percentage points.

Novus Capital’s Goulart was one of the economists to foresee a bigger inflation challenge for the central bank. 

“In order for inflation projections to converge, the Selic rate needs to reach at least 15.75% under current conditions, and Copom is saying it will do everything it can to make this happen,” Goulart said.

(Other stories from the Reuters global economic poll)

(Reporting and polling by Gabriel Burin in Buenos Aires; editing by Barbara Lewis (JO:LEWJ))

On Friday, UBS expressed concerns over the potential volatility of the Chinese Yuan (CNY), citing ongoing uncertainties surrounding US-China trade policies.

Despite President Donald Trump’s administration not implementing the highly anticipated aggressive trade tariffs on day one, the rhetoric of imposing tariffs on China and the EU persists.

Trump’s initial tariff announcement was a 10% levy on Chinese goods, less severe than expected. In response to the evolving trade landscape, China has signaled a willingness to expand imports, which could be seen as a positive step towards better trade relations with the US.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) adjusted the USDCNY daily fixing rate downward by nearly 200 pips, a move that coincided with a weakening US dollar, resulting in the USDCNY rate dropping from 7.33 to 7.28.

However, UBS analysts caution that this could easily reverse if the dollar gains strength again. Domestically, China’s fourth-quarter GDP growth of 5.4% year-over-year surpassed expectations, aligning with the government’s annual growth target of 5%.

Despite a favorable trade balance, the demand for USD in China remains high, and persistent deflationary pressures within the country, coupled with a less dovish Federal Reserve, suggest potential for further CNY depreciation.

UBS acknowledges that while the Chinese government may introduce additional macro-prudential measures to bolster the economy, the uncertainty of US tariff policies complicates the outlook.

In a scenario where the US imposes a significant 60% tariff on Chinese goods, UBS expects the USDCNY to potentially exceed 7.50.

Looking ahead, UBS anticipates the USDCNY to rise to 7.50 in the first half of 2025, given the subdued macroeconomic conditions in China and the risks posed by US tariffs.

However, should US-China trade negotiations lead to milder tariffs or a reversal in USD strength, the USDCNY might test 7.00 or even fall below. The PBoC’s focus on foreign exchange stability could keep the USDCNY fixing below 7.20 until the Trump administration finalizes its tariff plans on Chinese goods.

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