Company news in brief

Botswana suspends trading in Choppies shares

Botswana’s stock exchange has suspended trading in the shares of food retailer Choppies Enterprises because the company missed a deadline to publish its financial results, the bourse operator said on Thursday.

Choppies operates in eight African countries and has a secondary listing in Johannesburg, where its shares were also suspended. It failed to release its annual results within three months of its financial year-end, breaking the stock exchange’s rules.

“The trading of the Choppies securities will remain suspended until the company complies with the Stock Exchange listings rules or until further notice,” the Botswana Stock Exchange Limited (BSEL) said in a statement.

Choppies has 1.3 billion shares listed in Botswana and on the Johannesburg stock exchange.

In September, Choppies said the delay in publishing its results was due to its new auditors’ reassessment of the company’s balance sheet.

New external auditors appointed in January 2018 are reassessing the company’s past accounting practices and policies including valuation of inventory, impairments on property, plant equipment and the value of acquisitions by its South African subsidiary.

In a separate statement on Thursday, Choppies said it was still not able to determine when it would be in position to issue financial statements for the year ended June.

-Nampa/Reuters

Fox mulls buying back networks from Disney

Twenty-First Century Fox Inc executive chairman Lachlan Murdoch said Thursday it is still an “open question” whether the company will buy back the regional sports networks it sold to entertainment company Walt Disney Co in July as part of a US$71 billion deal.

Speaking at the New York Times Co’s DealBook conference in New York, Murdoch, who will become CEO of the remaining company “New Fox,” said the company “will be inquisitive” in looking at the possibility of buying back the sports assets.

Disney won a bidding war earlier this year against cable company Comcast Corp to acquire Fox’s film and TV assets. But the US Justice Department has said Disney, which owns cable sports network ESPN, must divest Fox’s 22 networks that provide sports programming for regional and local markets.

Murdoch said New Fox, which will include the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, will be strong in live programming, but viewership for live entertainment programs specifically is declining in the industry. Live sports can help support live entertainment programming, he added.

Murdoch also said US wireless carrier Verizon Communications Inc had called Fox 18 months ago to discuss a possible acquisition, but said the company felt the assets would not be the right fit with Verizon.

-Nampa/Reuters

Spotify faults itself for margin gains

Spotify sent its shares tumbling as much as 10% on Thursday after the world’s most popular paid music streaming service said it would continue to sacrifice profit margins to generate future growth.

The Swedish company came close to making its first-ever operating profit in the third quarter, years ahead of schedule, which the company said was because it had not been spending heavily enough to hire more engineers.

“Operating margin improvement in Q3 was largely due to shortfalls in hiring,” the company said in a statement, adding that its failure to spend more on hiring was continuing in the fourth quarter.

Spotify pledged to accelerate the pace of investments in research and development in new music services and additional content during 2019, which the company said would reduce its operating margins “for the foreseeable future.”

Hit by the global tech stock sell-off over the past month, Spotify’s shares have given up their 30 percent gain since their stock market debut in April on the New York Stock Exchange.

The shares dropped to US$137.73 in early trading following the third-quarter report, which showed gains in paid subscribers, revenue and gross margins that were roughly in line with market expectations. The stock closed at US$149 on its first trading day.

Hargreaves Lansdown analyst George Salmon said the performance was much better than forecast.

-Nampa/Reuters

Barclays picks next chairman

Barclays Plc said on Thursday that Nigel Higgins, the deputy chairman of Rothschild & Co, would succeed John McFarlane as chairman on May 2 next year when he retires after serving his four-year term.

Higgins will join the Barclays Board as a Non-Executive Director on March 1, 2019 and take over as chairman in May after the AGM, the bank said in a statement.

“In Nigel Higgins we have found an ideal candidate. He is a hugely respected banker, a strategic thinker, someone with extensive international experience, and he has a strong positive leadership style,” said Crawford Gillies, who led the process to appoint a successor to McFarlane.

Barclays, one of Britain’s biggest banks, has been subject to radical transformation in recent years and has faced uncertainty over its leadership, mainly due to regulatory scrutiny of chief executive Jes Staley’s treatment of a whistleblower.

-Nampa/Reuters

CBS revenue, profit tops estimates

TV broadcaster and media company CBS Corp beat analysts’ estimates for third-quarter revenue and profit on Thursday, boosted by strong advertising sales and higher digital subscriptions.

CBS, home to popular shows such as the “Big Bang Theory,” and “NCIS”, said advertising revenue during the reported quarter rose 14.2% to US$1.26 billion.

“We are confident that our strategy of growing CBS’ leadership position as a global multi-platform premium content company will lead to even greater creative and financial heights in the years to come,” said Joe Ianniello, interim Chief Executive Officer of CBS.

-Nampa/Reuters