Daily Watch – Broadband penetration deepens, Stocks continue fall

Konga has migrated to the Retail Accelerator Programme of global technology giant, Intel. Intel’s Consumer Manager for Nigeria, Olabanji Womiloju said that Konga’s reputation and outstanding performance in the e-commerce space were among the criteria used in selecting the company for the programme. Confirming the development, the Co-CEO of Konga Group, Nnamdi Ekeh, said the company is heading to the right direction in her strategies to change the e-commerce dynamics in Nigeria as such is an evidence that Konga’s efforts to revolutionize e-commerce in the country and beyond is noticed even beyond the shores of Africa. The partnership with Intel affords Konga the ability to meet the needs of its customers within and outside Nigeria, and positions the company for more marketing support, in order to drive huge product volumes and sellout in a competitive market, which has the likes of Jumia, an online marketplace across Africa. Konga’s elevation to the new retail channel program will take effect in Q2.

For the second consecutive day, the NSE maintained a bearish trend, dropping further by 1.02 percent due largely to mixed 2018 earnings reports. Market capitalisation fell by ₦120 billion or 1.02 percent to close at ₦11.677 trillion against ₦11.797 trillion on Monday. The ASI maintained the same direction, dropping by 323.30 points or 1.02 percent to close at 31,313.36 compared with 31,636.66 posted on Monday. The drop in market indices was contrary to expectations of some market analysts who were of the opinions that the market would rebound following relatively peaceful conduct of the general elections. In all, a total of 219.37 million shares valued at ₦2.93 billion was traded by investors in 3,345 deals, representing an increase of 70.89 percent. This was against 128.37 million shares worth ₦2.39 billion exchanged in 2,752 deals on Monday.

Figures from the NCC have shown that the country’s broadband penetration increased to 32.34 percent in January 2019 as the number of 3G and 4G subscriptions hit 61.7 million. In December 2018, NCC data indicated that Nigeria had attained a broadband penetration of 31.48 percent. The country set a five-year National Broadband Plan, which ran from 2013 to 2018, with the target of a minimum of 30 percent broadband penetration from the five percent it had in 2013. The NCC had said based on the 190 million population of Nigeria and 169 million connected lines, those who had access to broadband at a speed of 1.5 megabytes per second covered over 30 per cent of the population as of December 2018. Executive Vice-Chairman of the NCC, Umar Danbatta, recently noted that multiple regulations, right of way and delayed permits were some of the challenges affecting the broadband plan, and the NCC has deliberately developed a Strategic Vision Plan which was in line with the commission’s strategic management plan. The implementation of the SVP has so far resulted in the attainment of 30.9 percent broadband penetration as of November last year.

The Net Asset Value of Nigeria’s mutual funds dropped to ₦660 billion in November 2018, from N683 billion in October, indicating a pull-out of an estimated ₦29 billion by investors from their funds, analysis of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s report on mutual funds’ assets for the month of November 2018 has shown. New money into mutual funds is estimated to be around ₦9 billion. The fund investors are left with a total net asset value of ₦660.12 billion when the opening net asset value is combined with the withdrawals and subscriptions, as well as the gain for the month, which is estimated to be minus ₦2.4 billion, the analysis shows. The redemptions may be due to asset re-allocations by investors from money market mutual funds to treasury bills and bonds, even as yield inched further up in the month of November. It may also be as a result of fund pull-out by politicians to fund their elections campaigns and other political activities. The funds most affected include the Stanbic IBTC Money Market fund, which had the highest redemption in money term, but not on a percentage basis. Its money market fund category took in ₦23 billion worth of redemptions, with approximately ₦10 billion flowing out of Stanbic IBTC Money Market fund, and FBN Money Market fund, which suffered an estimated ₦9 billion redemption. Others are Union Homes Real Estate Investment Trust which saw ₦3 billion of outflow; ARM Money Market fund and AXA Money Market funds suffered redemption in the ₦1 billion range. However, Stanbic IBTC Dollar Fund received the highest new money in the amount of about ₦2.5 billion flowed by FBN Money market’s ₦1.4 billion.