Unlisted Securities Market Nears N1trn Valuation

By Dipo Olowookere The last trading day of November 2023 on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited ended on a bullish note by 0.11 per cent on Thursday. Mild bargain-hunting in industrial goods equities like Lafarge Africa, supported by Airtel Africa, GTCO and other financial stocks left the market in the green territory at the close of business. Consequently, the All-Share Index (ASI) increased by 81.91 points to settle at 71,365.25 points compared with the preceding day’s 71,283.34 points, and the market capitalisation grew by N44 billion to N39.052 trillion from N39.008 trillion. Business Post reports that the

By Adedapo Adesanya Oil slumped by more than 2 per cent on Friday as traders showed scepticism about the depth of supply cuts by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) as well as concerns about sluggish global manufacturing activity. Brent crude went down by $1.98 or 2.45 per cent to close at $78.88 a barrel as the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude dropped $1.89 or 2.49 per cent to sell for $74.07 a barrel. For the week, Brent posted a decline of about 2.1 per cent, while WTI lost more than 1.9 per cent.

By Adedapo Adesanya The Naira put up a weak performance against the United States Dollar across the various segments of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Thursday. November 30, 2023, the last trading session of the month. In the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) window, which is the official market, the Nigerian currency lost 0.1 per cent or 85 Kobo against the greenback during the session to settle at N832.32/$1 compared with the preceding day’s value of N831.47/$1. A slight strain in the supply of forex into the spot market was partly responsible for the weakening of the local

By Dipo Olowookere Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Audu Ogbeh, has handed over 25 tonnes of compounded ruminant feed, reaper, crushing machine and pasture seeds to the Nigerian Army Farms and Ranch. The farm inputs were given to the Nigerian Army at the unveiling of the army’s agricultural programme on Tuesday at Giri, Abuja. The Army Barracks’ agricultural programme initiated by Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai is aimed at cultivating the culture of investment in the agricultural value chain by officers and men of the Army and their families, as well as providing jobs for

By Adedapo Adesanya The NASD Over-the-Counter (OTC) Securities Exchange has announced its migration to a new trading platform known as NASD Electronic Trading System (N-ETS). In a notice, the exchange said the movement to the new platform will take effect from Monday, November 23, 2020 (today) and that investors and brokers will no longer be able to access the old interface known as the legacy system Bi-lateral Interdealer Trading System (BiTS). According to the bourse for the buying and selling of unlisted stocks in Nigeria, all the relevant information previously on BiTS will be moved to the N-ETS from today.

By Dipo Olowookere In the first half of 2020, Amazon Web Services will open an infrastructure region in South Africa that will consist of three Availability Zones. Currently, AWS provides 55 Availability Zones across 19 infrastructure regions worldwide, with another 12 Availability Zones across four AWS Regions in Bahrain, Hong Kong SAR, Sweden, and a second GovCloud Region in the U.S. expected to come online in the coming months. For more information on AWS’s global infrastructure, go to: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/. “Having built the original version of Amazon EC2 in our Cape Town development center 14 years ago, and with thousands of

By Dipo Olowookere The deteriorating shortage of aviation fuel, otherwise known as JET-A1, in Nigeria has caused a new apprehension among airline operators in the country. For a while now, operators have had to deal with scarcity of the commodity, which has forced some of them to cancel their flights abruptly. Also, the cost of purchasing the product, especially with the forex crisis in Nigeria, has made some airline operators to cut down on frequency of flight operations to some routes. In some cases, few of them have had to buy from neighbouring countries where they can get it at

By Adedapo Adesanya President Muhammadu Buhari has reiterated the commitment of his administration in partnering with the private sector to move the Nigerian economy. The President, represented by the Minister of Trade and Investment, Mr Niyi Adebayo, stated this at the weekend in Kaduna while declaring open the 43rd Kaduna International Trade Fair. According to him, the theme of the fair, Re-Strategizing Nigeria’s Economy for Global Competitiveness, aptly captures the country’s development priorities. He said the recent COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant effects on crude oil prices, foreign exchange and investment inflows have shown that there was a need to

By Dipo Olowookere The financial statements of Guinness Nigeria Plc, one of the leading brewery companies in the country, were released on Wednesday to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). Highlight of the results showed that the firm declared a 4 percent drop in its revenue for the first half of its financial year ended December 31, 2018. The revenue generated by the company in the period under review was N67.8 billion against N70.6 billion it raked a year ago. Also, the cost of sales skyrocketed by 1.59 percent to N47.3 billion from N46.6 billion, while the gross profit fell by

By Adedapo Adesanya The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved an additional funding of €12.33 million for the Abidjan to Lagos highway corridor project. This brings the total contribution made by the Africa oriented lender on the project to €22.4 million . In a statement, the lender said the funds would be used to cover part of the costs related to the study of the Abidjan – Lagos motorway corridor development project which links cities across five West African countries namely Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. “The Abidjan – Lagos project, an important regional trade and transport corridor

**As Governors’ Move to Stop Implementation Fails In what appears to be testing waters for the 36 state Governors, a Federal High Court sitting in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, under Justice A. A. Okeke has declined to grant the request of Akwa Ibom State government to stop the implementation of the guidelines on local government funds issued recently by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU). The NFIU had on May 6 issued the ‘Guidelines to Reduce Vulnerabilities Created by Cash Withdrawals from Local Government Funds throughout Nigeria’ which restored the full mandate of the operations of State/Local Government Joint Accounts