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BUSINESS ROUNDUP: External reserves shed $315m; Nigerian manufacturing sector shrinks further; See other stories that made our pick

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BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Nigeria to disconnect Togo and Benin; China displaces America. See other stories that made our pick

Hello, and welcome to Business Roundup this week. Here, we bring you highlights of events that happened during the week -from the capital market, mainstream business activities while not forgetting the tech/economy build up.

Here are the Headlines:

  • Nigerian Breweries’ half-year profit falls by 58%, turnover by 12%
  • Businesses hopeful economy will improve in August –CBN survey
  • External reserves shed $315m in one month –CBN
  • Nigerian manufacturing sector shrinks for the third straight month in July –CBN

 Summary:

Beer maker, Nigerian Breweries Plc, has reported a 58% contraction in its top line for the first of half of 2020 as turnover fell to N151.810 billion from N170.191 billion in the relative period of last year.

Its unaudited interim financial statements for the six months ended 30th June, 2020 published on the website of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Thursday revealed Profit Before Tax (PBT) dived from N19.737 billion to N8.406 billion. Put differently, PBT recorded a negative growth of N10.971 billion or 56.6% between the periods. Read more

Businesses in Nigeria are nursing the hope that the economic conditions in Nigeria in the month ahead will better those of July even though this optimism is largely measured across firms, data from the July 2020 Business Expectations Survey Report of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), revealsed on Friday.

Respondent firms in the opinion poll, whose thoughts are aggregated in the document posted on the CBN website, believe that things will be fairly more favourable in August with their confidence level put at 33.7 relative to a dim view of the economy held by them for the month of July, standing at -7.9. Read more

Nigeria’s external reserves edged lower by $314.927 million from $36.214 billion on 28th June to $35.899 billion on 28th July 2020, equivalent to a 1% margin, data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s website showed Friday.

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Oil prices rise; Naira gains against dollar; See other stories that made our pick

The apex bank had in its economic report for the first quarter of the year, christened Gross Official External Reserves, noted that the country’s foreign reserves fell to $33.69 billion, 11.6% lower than the figure posted the quarter before. Read more

Nigeria’s Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which measures the direction of trends and developments in the manufacturing industry, tightened for the third successive month at 44.9 index points in July, as Africa’s biggest economy grapples with a disruption to its supply chain by the coronavirus outbreak, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said Wednesday.

‘Of the 14 surveyed subsectors, transportation equipment subsector reported growth (above 50% threshold) in the review month while non-metallic mineral products sector reported no change. Read more

On NSE ROUNDUP: Trade returns N139bn despite limited sessions

Fewer trading sessions were conducted this week on the equity session of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) than the last due to a two-day break on Thursday and Friday, observed in commemoration of the Sallah festival. This had implications for trade, which although was comparatively low, returned N139 billion.

All the key market performance indicators closed higher. A negative market breadth was recorded this week as 28 losers emerged against 24 gainers. The All Share Index (ASI) and the Market Capitalisation simultaneously advanced by 1.09% to 24,693.73 basis points and N12.882 trillion respectively. Read more

MEANWHILE, Nigeria’s printing press Kiakiaprint has entered a partnership deal with online design company Canva.

The Nigerian print-on-demand startup will, henceforth, serve as one of Canva’s footprint in West Africa. Beyond having an impressive business vision, operating in Africa’s largest economy has placed Kiakiaprint in a relative position to tap into the digital opportunity presented by Canva.

While Canva will leverage on Kiakiaprint’s service to boast revenue of its company and millions of designers signed up on its platform, Kiakiaprint is cutting a huge chunk of the design market to become its printing service of choice. With this marriage, other firms (such as Printavo) in the Kiakiaprint market space might suffer significant revenue loss.

Soon, Canva will become the largest printing service influencer. More so, there are tendencies that the company will over time sign up other printing service for a fee to tap into its pool of resources. Hence, Kiakiaprint might be on a bait for the Australian company to establish its presence, test its solution and experiment how sustainable its product could be.

Thanks for joining the roundup this week. See you next week for another serving of Business Roundup. Don’t forget, for the latest news and updates from around the globe, keep reading Ripples Nigeria.

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