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30 Jan, 2025 07:37 30 Jan, 2025 07:37

Sage makes strong start to year, Airtel reports customer growth but narrower earnings

London open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open five points higher on Thursday, having closed up 0.28% on Thursday at 8,557.81.

Stocks to watch

Corporate software group Sage said it has made a strong start to its new financial year with revenues rising by a tenth in the first quarter, as all regions delivered solid growth. Revenues totalled £612m in the three months to 31 December, up from £558m a year earlier, with Sage Business Cloud revenues up 13% at £502m. “We reiterate our guidance for the full year, as set out in our FY24 results announcement, as we continue to focus on efficiently scaling the group,” said chief financial officer Jonathan Howell.

Airtel Africa reported strong operational growth for the nine months ended 31 December on Thursday, with its customer base increasing 7.9% to 163.1 million, data usage per customer rising by 32.3%, and mobile money subscribers growing by 18.3%. Revenue rose 20.4% in constant currency but declined 5.8% in reported terms due to currency devaluation, while EBITDA fell 11.9% to $1.68bn, although margin improvements were seen in the third quarter. The company said it continued reducing foreign currency debt, noted the launch of a second $100m share buyback, and maintained its capital investment strategy despite challenges from currency fluctuations and increased costs.

Newspaper round-up

The architect of a ban on newspaper takeovers by foreign states has demanded that an Abu Dhabi fund be forced to sell The Telegraph by Easter. Baroness Stowell, the Conservative chairman of the Lords communications and digital committee, said the Government should impose an ultimatum on RedBird IMI. It should be backed by the threat of regulatory action, she said, to strip the fund of control of what has been dubbed “the newspaper auction from hell”. – Telegraph

Car production has slumped to levels not seen since the 1950s as the sector struggles with the shift to electric vehicles. The number of cars made in Britain fell to 779,584 last year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), which was the lowest level since 1954, aside from the Covid pandemic. - Telegraph

UK retailers are warning that crime in their stores is “spiralling out of control” with 55,000 thefts a day and violent and abusive incidents rising by 50% last year. More than 70 incidents a day involved a weapon, according to the annual crime survey from the British Retail Consortium (BRC). – Guardian

Water bills will rise by an average of £123 this year in the biggest hit to customer pockets since the industry was privatised 36 years ago, as the public pays to replace ageing infrastructure and cut record sewage pollution. The price hike for millions of customers in England and Wales from 1 April will take the annual average bill from £480 to £603, and is higher than the £86 rise predicted by the regulator Ofwat in December, because water companies are adding inflation on top. – Guardian

Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing business posted a slowdown in quarterly growth, compounding investors ­worries about its huge investment in artificial intelligence products after China’s DeepSeek released a low-cost AI chatbot. Revenue from Azure, the group’s main profit engine in recent years, rose 31 per cent in the second quarter, compared with a 34 per cent increase in the prior quarter. The sales growth missed analysts’ estimates and came in at the lower end of Microsoft’s forecast of between 31 per cent and 32 per cent. – The Times

US close

US stocks closed in the red on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve said it would bide its time before making any further interest-rate cuts, while investors turned cautious ahead of a number of heavyweight corporate earnings due after the closing bell.

Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Tesla were all due to report quarterly figures after markets closed, with the focus likely to have shifted in recent days to how much the tech giants are spending on their AI software.

There was a huge sell-off of AI-related stocks on Monday after the news that Chinese outfit DeepSeek has managed to develop an LLM assistant of similar capabilities to the US majors' at a fraction of the cost.

Meta edged higher on Wednesday, while Microsoft and Tesla both fell.

The Dow fell 0.3% by the end of play, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both dropped 0.5%.

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