Loses Archives — Business Bells

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Tag: Loses

  • Zuckerberg Loses $7bn in Hours As Facebook Suffers Outage   –Report

    Zuckerberg Loses $7bn in Hours As Facebook Suffers Outage   –Report

     

    Silicon Valley techpreneur Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth has fallen by nearly $7 billion in a few hours, knocking him down a notch on the list of the world’s richest people, after a whistleblower came forward and outages took Facebook Inc.’s flagship products offline, Bloomberg reports.

     

     Since 04:25pm on Monday, users visiting Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have been confronted with error messages.

     

    At least over three billion online users are frustrated and unable to connect all over the world due to the shutdown.

     

    Chief Technology Officer at Facebook, Mike Schroepfe, tweeted, “Sincere apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services right now. We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible.”

     

    According to Bloomberg, a selloff sent the social-media giant’s stock plummeting around 5% on Monday, adding to a drop of about 15% since mid-September.

     

    The stock slide on Monday sent Zuckerberg’s worth down to $120.9 billion, dropping him below Bill Gates to No. 5 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He’s lost about $19 billion of wealth since September 13, when he was worth nearly $140 billion, according to the index.

     

    On September 13, the Wall Street Journal began publishing a series of stories based on a cache of internal documents, revealing that Facebook knew about a wide range of problems with its products — such as Instagram’s harm to teenage girls’ mental health and misinformation about the Jan. 6 Capitol riots — while downplaying the issues in public.

     

    The reports have drawn the attention of government officials, and on Monday, the whistleblower revealed herself for the first time and accused the social media giant of putting “profit over safety” of its users.

     

    In response, Facebook has emphasised that the issues facing its products, including political polarisation, are complex and not caused by technology alone.

     

    Many social media users are currently on Twitter while the microblogging chief Jack Dorsey is asking how much it cost to buy Facebook’s domain name.

     

  • MTN Loses 5 Million Subscribers, Records $385.1bn Revenue In Q1 2021

    MTN Loses 5 Million Subscribers, Records $385.1bn Revenue In Q1 2021

     

    Telecom provider, MTN has recorded a service revenue growth by 17.2% YoY to N385.1 billion during the first quarter of 2021. This is up 5.4% from the N365.2bn of the previous quarter.

     

    Karl Toriola, MTN CEO announced: “We made good progress in the first quarter of 2021 despite the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

     

    As revealed in its reports the tremendous feat can be credited to the huge growth of data and voice revenue despite the impact of the pandemic and a decline in subscribers.

     

    The report further reveals that voice revenue, which generated 63% of the total sum, grew by 8.0% from N226.5Bn to N244.6Bn. This growth was supported by the 8.7% increase in traffic and customer value management initiatives. Data revenue saw even higher growth. The report shows that it maintained the positive momentum from Q4 2020, rising by 42.6% YoY to N105.6Bn.

     

    Expenses rose by 14.8% to N180.7bn, mainly driven by a 19.2% increase in operating expenses arising from an accelerated site rollout and the effects of Naira depreciation on lease rental costs.

     

    Similarly, Capital expenditure in the quarter was N89.9 billion, up 19.3% mainly due to site rollouts, while free cash flow increased by 18.9% to N114.7 billion.

     

    MTN explained that the effect of the SIM ban on voice revenue was offset by increased usage by active SIMs in its base and migration to a higher quality of experience.

     

    This was fueled by increased usage, traffic, the boost in 4G penetration and increased network capacity following the acquisition and activation of an additional 800MHz spectrum in March 2021.

     

    Insights from the report show that that data traffic increased by 86.7% with the addition of the 800MHz spectrum enhancing output by 79%.

     

    With the huge revenue MTN raked during the quarter, its profit should have been higher than the N73.7 bn reported. The dropped was caused by the double-digit growth in expenses.

     

    The telco however said the overall increase in expenses was partly mitigated by the comparatively moderate growth of 7.8% in the cost of sales following the suspension of new SIM sales and activations.

     

    Additionally, the report also shows that Mobile subscribers declined by 5 million to 71.5 million while Active data users declined marginally by 71,000 to 32.5 million.

     

    According to the Telco giant, the 4-month NCC ban on new SIM sales and registration effectively curtailed subscriber growth. During the ban, MTN lost a total of 9.2 million subscribers – representing 75% of the 12.2m subscribers it added in the entire 2020.

  • Nigeria Loses N151.78bn Crude Oil Monthly – NNPC

    Nigeria Loses N151.78bn Crude Oil Monthly – NNPC

    Nigeria is currently losing an average of 200,000 barrels of crude oil daily, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation stated on Wednesday.

     

    Brent, the oil against which Nigeria’s crude is priced, was $66.75 per barrel on Wednesday, while the official exchange rate of the dollar stood at 379/$.

     

    From the above figures, it showed that the country was losing about N151.79bn in 30 days, going by the 200,000 barrels of crude oil being lost daily, as revealed by NNPC.

     

    Group Managing Director, NNPC, Mele Kyari, disclosed the volume of crude oil lost daily in Nigeria while speaking at a meeting with the Chief of Defence Staff, Major General Lucky Irabor.

     

    The NNPC boss was quoted in a statement issued in Abuja by the corporation’s spokesperson, Kennie Obateru, as saying, “We have two sets of losses, one coming from our products and the other coming from crude oil.

     

    “In terms of crude losses, it is still going on. On the average, we are losing 200,000 barrels of crude every day.”

     

    On his part, Irabor promised to galvanise the military to provide maximum security for the nation’s oil and gas assets.

     

    He said, “I am delighted that you made this effort, and I tell you that the Armed Forces of Nigeria will collaborate with you to protect NNPC’s assets.”

     

    Irabor acknowledged the role of the oil and gas sector to the economy and stated that there was need for collaboration between the NNPC and the Armed Forces to protect oil and gas facilities.

     

    “It is my intention to cooperate maximally with you and to give necessary instructions to all officers in the Armed Forces,” he said.

     

    In a related development, a professor of law at the University of Lagos, Dayo Ayoade, has said the Federal Government was losing huge revenue in the upstream sector through the inadequacy of the measurement infrastructure.

     

    Between 2009 and 2019, the lecturer said, the nation lost 500 million barrels of crude oil valued at $44.7bn which was not assessed for royalty and tax.

     

    Disclosing this at a virtual meeting on illicit financial flows organised by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission in Abuja on Wednesday, Ayoade pointed out that Nigeria currently relied on crude oil producers for determination of crude oil volumes.

     

    He said, “Nigeria currently relies on holders and producers of crude oil for determination of volumes of crude oil.

  • Power Sector Loses N20.5bn As Load Rejection Lingers

    Power Sector Loses N20.5bn As Load Rejection Lingers

    About N20.5bn revenue was lost by Nigeria’s power sector between January 1 and 22, 2021, as operators in the business complained that energy was still being rejected by distributors.

     

    Data obtained from the Federal Ministry of Power on Friday showed that the sector lost N20.5bn within the first three weeks of the year.

     

    Our correspondent also gathered that a total of 1,941 megawatts-hour/hour of electricity was constrained during this period, as this quantum of energy could not be generated on the national grid.

     

    The major constraints that stopped the production of this quantum of power were insufficient gas supply, as well as lack of distribution and transmission infrastructure.

     

    Further findings from the power ministry revealed that the average energy that was sent out during the period was 4,505MWH/H.

     

    Also, peak power generated on the country’s grid within this three weeks was put at 5,584MW, as industry operators decried the persistent rejection of electricity by power distribution companies.

     

    The General Manager, Market Operations, Transmission Company of Nigeria, Edmund Eje, stated that the widening revenue gap in the market had further made the Discos to drop electricity load.

     

    Eje, who spoke at the just held virtual power dialogue, explained that the load rejection had impacted negatively on the machines of power generation and transmission companies.

     

    He said, “As the market gap started widening, the Discos resorted to reducing their invoice monthly. How could that be effected? It was by reducing the amount of energy they take.

     

    “By reducing the amount of energy you take, you are restricting the amount of energy to be evacuated from the transmission side.

     

    “And it has to be understood by everybody in the power sector that energy consumed, generated and evacuated are done simultaneously because energy is not stored anywhere.”

     

    He added, “Although we have new technologies coming out now where you can use batteries to store energy, I can tell you that as the generator is generating, transmission is evacuating it.