Transactions on the floor of Nigerian Stock Exchanged on Thursday
sustained growth profile, appreciating by N229 billion.
Specifically, market capitalisation of listed equities increased by
1.99 per cent to N11.722 trillion from N11.493 trillion reported on
Wednesday.
The NSE All Share Index appreciated by 611.69 basis points to 31433.49
points from 30821.80 points traded the previous day.
Investors traded 436.748 million shares worth N5.880 billion in 4047
deals against 359.091 million shares cost N4.828 billion in 3319
deals.
The trading result indicated that Nestle Nigeria Plc led gainers
table, growing by N10.00 to close at N1470.00, Guaranty Trust Bank
followed with a gain of N3.30 kobo to close N38.00, Forte Oil gained
N2.70 kobo to close at N29.70 kobo, Dangote Cement industries
appreciated by N2.00 to close at N190.00, Zenith Bank Plc added N1.65
kobo to close at N24.45 kobo.
Conversely, Conoil Plc recorded the highest loss during the day,
shedding N0.25 kobo to close N23.00, NEM Insurance Plc trailed with a
loss of N0.15 kobo to close N2.30 kobo, Learn Africa fell by N0.10
kobo to close at N1.40 kobo, Trans Express down by N0.06 kobo to close
at N0.60 kobo, Cutix Plc dropped by N0.05 kobo to close at N1.90 kobo.
A further review of the investment showed that United Bank for Africa
was investors delight exchanging 136.502 million shares worth N987.075
million, Zenith Bank Plc followed with account of 63.434 million
shares worth 1.485 billion, Access Bank Plc traded 44.434 million
shares valued at N277.870 million, FBNHoldings sold 31.486 million
shares cost N236.264 million while Guaranty Trust Bank exchanged
31.448 million shares valued at N1.148 billion.
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Twitter reports higher profits in Q4 2018
Twitter has reported a jump in profits for the final quarter of 2018,
despite a fall in the number of people using the micro-blogging
platform.
Profits rose sharply to $255m (£197m), more than double the $91m
profit it made a year earlier, as advertising revenues grew.
But Twitter downgraded its revenue forecast for the current quarter.
The company said user numbers were down in the last quarter because it
had deleted millions of abusive accounts.
Twitter removed some accounts after criticism that it was facilitating
political manipulation and hate speech.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said “2018 is proof that our
long-term strategy is working”.
“We enter this year confident that we will continue to deliver strong
performance by focusing on making Twitter a healthier and more
conversational service,” he added.
Twitter said revenue in the last quarter had risen 24% to $909m as
video advertising grew.
But the firm said its revenue for the first quarter of 2019 was likely
to fall to between $715m and $775m, lower than the range analysts had
expected.
It also said operating expenses for 2019 were likely to be 20% higher
than the previous year, making it harder to maintain higher profits.
Social media companies have come under pressure to police the content
of their sites more closely after scandals over mental health, user
privacy, hate speech and political campaigning. Twitter said it had
removed millions of abusive accounts as part of its clean-up effort.
Clement Thibault, analyst at global financial platform Investing.com,
said: “Total user numbers are down, but we’ve known for a while now
that Twitter has a fake-users problem and is trying to deal with it,
so that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
“Higher operating expenses, on the other hand, are a bigger problem,
as I anticipate Twitter’s margins and profits to shrink considerably
in 2019.”
Currently 321 million people use Twitter, as calculated on a monthly
basis, down from 330 million a year earlier. Twitter said it would
stop disclosing monthly active users and switch to reporting active
daily users instead.
Source: BBC
