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Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Unilever Nigeria, has said that it will be exiting the home care and skin cleansing markets to reposition its business for sustained profitability.

This was revealed in a corporate notice to the Nigerian Exchange Limited and signed by its Company Secretary, Abidemi Ademola.

The company said that it was changing its business model to accelerate the growth of the company and meet the needs of consumers, shareholders, and employees better.

Part of the statement read, “This will involve repurposing the portfolio by exiting the home care and skin cleansing categories to concentrate on higher growth opportunities.

“Strengthening business operations with measures to digitise and simplify processes; and focusing more on business continuity measures that reduce exposure to devaluation and currency liquidity in our business model.”

The company added that its exit of these two categories over 2023 was envisaged to result in the overall improvement in profitability, growth and a more sustainable business.

The market capitalisation of the Nigerian Exchange Limited shed N3bn on Monday at the close of trading.

This was also as the All-Share Index dropped by 6.14 points representing a decrease of 0.011 per cent to close at 55, 788.37.

At the close of trading on Monday, 179,028,155 million of shares worth N2.547bn were traded in 4,296 deals.

The market breadth trended towards negative as 21 stocks ended up on the losers’ table while 12 equities were on the gainers’ table.

Topping the losers’ table was the stock of the NGX Group, which had been seeing a lot of insider trading in the past days. NGX Group lost 9.72 per cent of it share value to close at N26.00 per share. Following was the NPF Microfinance Bank which lost 8.47 per cent of its value to close trading at N1.73. Third on the losers’ table was Courtville which closed trading at N0.45 per share after losing 6.25 per cent of its share value.

For the gainers’ table, UPL gained 9.89 per cent to close trading at N2.00. Computer Warehouse Group and Multiverse gained 7.69 per cent and 2.05 per cent to close trading at N0.98 and N3.75 respectively.

Atop the Most Traded stocks chart on Monday was Zenith Bank which traded 14,834,841 shares worth N374,262,538.35 in 388 deals. Zenith Bank’s share value closed at N25,00.

Next was MTN Nigeria, whose 462,734 shares were traded. The shares valued at N114.904m were exchanged in 301 deals and the share closed at N248.30. Third on the gainers’ table was United Capital Plc which had 9,115,536 million of its shares sold in 235 deals. The shares were worth N132.752m.

Guinea Insurance Plc has said it injected about N900m capital into its business in 2022 financial period.

It also said it was in the process of listing 1.8 billion shares.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the insurance company, Mr Ademola Abidogun, disclosed this at the Nigerian Association of Insurance and Pension Editors’ 2023 first quarter CEO’s Forum in Lagos.

Abidogun said the insurer has huge funds within its system and over N2bn cash under its management to do business.

He noted that the underwriting firm made its highest gross premium written of N1.4bn in 2022, compared to the last 10 years.

The managing director said, “We were also able to make underwriting profit. If you look at the statistics, Guinea insurance has consistently grown so much in its underwriting profit.

“When you check the financials, you will see that the core business of insurance is underwriting, which means; collect business, underwrite it and make profit.”

According to Abidogun, the insurance company was working to improve its investment portfolio, as fund was essential to sustain a business.

He said Guinea insurance’s claims payment method was one of the best in the market because the firm noted one of the main reasons for doing insurance business was to pay claims.

“If we pride ourself as one of the best in the industry in terms of claims payments, we must be able to pay claims after collecting people’s premium,” Abidogun said.

According to him, while the underwriting firm had experienced some challenges few years back in the market, it had been able to resuscitate its business between 2021 and 2022.

Abidogun noted that Guinea insurance also had to confront perception issues, because a lot of people thought the insurer was a one man business, meanwhile it was a Plc with a robust structure.

The managing director said the insurance firm had started business well in year 2023 in terms of production and as of February, it had done over 300 per cent of what it did same time last year.

An increase in failed payment transactions in February caused a 4.83 per cent decrease in the value of cashless transactions to N37.67tn from the N39.58tn that was recorded in January 2023.

This came as the usage of epayment gateways recorded a 41.29 per cent month-on-month increase according to new data from Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System.

In February, cashless gateways were used 901.46 million times, in January, they were used 638 million times. Despite an increase in usage, the total value of cashless transactions fell in February, indicating an increase in the number of failed transactions.

The NIBSS has not updated its efficiency platform portal, which states the number of failed transitions and more, since 2020, making it hard to report the number of failed transactions.

As the major payment switch in the country, the NIBSS records cashless transactions from the Nigeria Instant Payment System and Point of Sales terminals. In February, the total NIP (instant payments) fell to N36.79tn from N38.772tn in January.

Despite the scarcity of naira witnessed in the month, the data from NIBSS revealed that the value of PoS transactions grew from N807.16bn in January to N883.45bn in February.

Usage of mobile transfers, which serve as the primary payment gateway for many Nigerians, soared by 69.87 per cent from 108.14 million times in January to 183.69 million times in February.

While usage grew drastically, transaction value only grew marginally by 7.88 per cent from N2.37tn in January to N2.56tn in February. This mirrored the experience of many Nigerians in the month, who had to grapple with multiple failed mobile transactions.

Since the Central Bank of Nigeria announced its naira redesign policy and withdrawal limits, in 2022, Nigerians have had to adopt electronic forms of transactions.

While announcing its policy, the apex bank said, “The maximum weekly limit for cash withdrawals across all channels by individuals and corporate organisations shall be N500,000 and N5m respectively.”

It added, “Customers should be encouraged to use alternative channels (Internet banking, mobile banking apps, USSD, cards/POS, eNaira, etc.) to conduct their banking transactions.”

The stock market of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) last week extended its positive run for the third consecutive week, primarily driven by the gains in Dangote Cement Plc and MTN Nigeria Communications stocks.

Thus, NGX All-Share Index notched a 0.48 per cent week-on-week (W-o-W) gain to close at 55,794.51 basis points as the market capitalisation appreciated by N145 billion W-o-W to close at N30.395 trillion.

Across the sectors last week, performance was largely on a mixed trend. Thus, there were declines in the NGX Banking, NGX Consumer Goods, and NGX Oil & Gas indices of 1.82 per cent, 0.26 per cent, and 3.82 per cent from the previous week, while positive price movement was seen in the NGX Industrial Goods index and NGX Insurance index with a gain of 1.71 per cent and 0.70 per cent respectively through the week as investors posed their expectations for the dividend season.

However, market breadth for the week was negative as 22 equities appreciated in price, 41 equities depreciated in price, while 94 equities remained unchanged. Julius Berger Nigeria led the gainers table by 10 per cent to close at N26.95, per share. Trans-Nationwide Express followed with a gain of 9.88 per cent to close at 89 kobo, while International Energy Insurance went up by 8.33 per cent to close to N1.30, per share.

On the other side, MRS Oil Nigeria led the decliners table by 18.99 per cent to close at N27.95, per share. Conoil followed with a loss of 18.89 per cent to close at N38.00, while FTN Cocoa Processors declined by 13.33 per cent to close at 26 kobo, per share.

Overall, a total turnover of 1.023 billion shares worth N20.221 billion in 18,650 deals was traded last week by investors on the floor of the Exchange, in contrast to a total of 1.910 billion shares valued at N18.436 billion that exchanged hands last week in 20,311 deals.

The Financial Services Industry (measured by volume) led the activity chart with 414.427 million shares valued at N5.646 billion traded in 8,136 deals; contributing 40.50 per cent and 27.92 per cent to the total equity turnover volume and value respectively. The Conglomerates Industry followed with 307.868 million shares worth N479.512 million in 1,122 deals, while the Industrial Goods Industry traded a turnover of 104.234 million shares worth N10.354 billion in 1,334 deals.

Trading in the top three equities; Transnational Corporation, Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) and BUA Cement accounted for 447.809 million shares worth N9.556 billion in 2,018 deals, contributing 43.76 per cent and 47.26 per cent to the total equity turnover volume and value respectively.