The world’s biggest carmaker, Toyota, has raised its profit forecast as the yen’s weakness and cost-cutting measures helped lift its earnings. It now expects to make a net profit of 1.67tn yen ($16.9bn; £10.5bn) in the financial year to 31 March 2014, up from an earlier forecast of 1.48tn yen. Toyota upped the forecast as it reported a net profit of 1tn yen for the six months to the end of September. The results are in contrast with Nissan which cut its profit outlook recently. Toyota said it expects to sell 9.1 million vehicles in the current financial year and generate a revenue of 25tn yen during the period. Japanese carmakers, including Toyota, rely heavily on sales in foreign markets. As a result, any fluctuation in the currency markets has an impact on their profitability.
Updated 6 Years ago

U.S. stocks are grossly overpriced, according to asset management firm Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo (GMO) & Company, which estimates fair value for the S&P 500 Index at 1,100 - or almost 40 percent below current levels. In a quarterly letter published on Monday, Ben Inker, co-head of global asset allocation at GMO said the expected rate of return on the stock market index is minus 1.3 percent per year, adjusted for inflation, for the next seven years. "[The] U.S. stock market is trading at levels that do not seem capable of supporting the type of returns that investors have gotten used to receiving from equities," Inker wrote in a report titled "Breaking News! U.S. Equity Market Overvalued!" "Combining the current P/E [price-to-earnings ratio] of over 19 for the S&P 500 and a return on sales about 42 percent over the historical average, we would get an estimate that the S&P 500 is approximately 75 percent overvalued," he said.
Updated 6 Years ago

LAGOS — Nigeria’s economic growth, GDP, rose in the third quarter as the oil industry’s contraction eased and agricultural output increased. Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics,NBC, said that the amount of goods and services produced in the country in the month of July, August and September 2013, (Gross Domestic Product) rose to 6.81 per cent on an annual basis. This it said was the fastest rate of growth this year, compared with 6.18 per cent in the second quarter. The Africa Development Bank, AfDB, had said that the outlook for growth of the economy remains positive while listing the downside risks to include security challenges arising from religious conflict in some states and slower global growth.
Updated 6 Years ago

Nigeria Employers' Consultative Association (NECA) Monday alerted the federal government and new investors of a looming danger of industrial harmony in the power sector, which if not urgently addressed, could undermine whatever benefit that has been recorded in the just concluded privatisation exercise in the sector. The Director General of NECA, Mr. Olusegun Oshinowo, who raised the alarm at a press conference in Lagos, said guaranteeing regular electricity supply went beyond handing over of the assets of Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to private investors.
Updated 6 Years ago

THE Minister of Finance, yesterday, denied Senate allegation that N500 billion was missing from the SURE-P funds. A statement signed by Paul Nwabuikwu, Special Adviser Media to the Coordinating Minister of Finance said “contrary to some recent media reports, there is no missing N500 billion from SURE-P funds. The claim is completely false.
Updated 6 Years ago

The federal government plans to begin the privatisation of four of its state-owned oil refineries before the end of the first quarter of next year, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke has said. “We would like to see major infrastructure entities, such as refineries, moving out of government hands into the private sector,” Alison-Madueke said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Africa in London. Speaking further, she said:
Updated 6 Years ago

Following the insistence of the major Oil Marketing and Trading (OM & T) companies involved in the importation of petroleum products that the federal government should pay interest rate for its failure to pay fuel subsidy within 45-day cycle stipulated under the Petroleum Support Fund (PSF) scheme, the government has yielded to their demand, THISDAY has learnt. This is coming as the Federal Ministry of Finance at the weekend commenced massive payment of the outstanding subsidy to ensure seamless supply of petroleum products across the country during the yuletide.
Updated 6 Years ago

Sony's PlayStation 4 is off to a hot start. Consumers in North America bought more than 1 million PS4s within the first 24 hours of the new $399 home video game console going on sale Friday. That's the fastest start for a PlayStation system so far. Shuhei Yoshida, president of Worldwide studios for Sony Computer Entertainment, posted the news on Twitter Sunday. As often happens when a mass release of a high-tech product occurs, a few consumers get a lemon. Some PS4 owners reported that their new console would not output video and had a flashing light, entertainment news site IGN.com reported.
Updated 6 Years ago

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has launched a new call for competitive bid to supply 1,750 metric tonnes of locally produced rice in Haiti, by farmers’ organisations for the school feeding programme. The call marks the beginning of WFP's commitment to increase its local procurement activities for this year and next year, in support of government objectives to increase local agricultural production, in order to reduce food insecurity and malnutrition, while increasing accessibility to markets for farmers. “Through these supplies, WFP aims to invest in a sustainable supply system for the country to help increase the income of the producer members of peasant organisations,” said the WFP Representative in Haiti, George Heymell.
Updated 6 Years ago

Francis Bacon's painting "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" became the most expensive work of art ever sold when it fetched $142.4 million in one of the biggest auctions in history. Bacon's 1969 triptych, never before offered at auction and carrying a presale estimate of about $85 million, easily eclipsed the $119.9 millionEdvard Munch's "The Scream" achieved in May last year at Sotheby's. The auction of 69 works of postwar and contemporary art also took in $691,583,000, including commissions, far above the estimated $480 million to $670 million. That makes it the richest auction in history, eclipsing Christie's sale of contemporary art in May, which totaled $495 million. The sale set yet another significant record—for a price achieved at auction by a living artist—when Jeff Koons' large sculpture "Balloon Dog (Orange)" fetched $58.4 million. The price beat the high presale estimate and smashed the previous record for a living artist of $37.1 million, set by Gerhard Richter's "Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan)" in May.
Updated 6 Years ago