Heyaaaaaa

Your dearest and fav has missed you  soooooooooo much! I wish you could hear my heartbeat: beating in love for you.
Am I beginning to sound dramatic?Even though I’ve already told you “Happy new year”, might we re-take just for special effect?

Happy newwwwwwwww yearrrrrrr, fam-bam! Mehn, I missed you guys. Did you miss me?

While I wait for you to tweet back at me [@Trovefinance], let’s talk Stocks!

Shall we begin?!

GTB Subsidiary In The UK, Fined!

Sooo… what has GT done? Let me gist you about it.

For those who don’t know what GTB is, it’s a financial institution (bank) with headquarters in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria. Their subsidiary in the UK was fined over failure with the anti-money laundering systems. In other words, the systems that should be put in place to stop/reduce criminal activities were weak and not up to standard.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said they had reached out to the bank between October 2014 and July 2019 to look into the situation but they didn’t take them seriously. Errhhh that’s over a 5 year period  Since their report fell on deaf ears, Britain’s financial watchdog slapped them with a fine of 7.6 million pounds (₦4.16 bn). Can we blame the FCA now? Smh

The director of enforcement at FCA, Tracey McDermott, said “Banks are at the front line in ensuring the proceeds of crime do not enter the UK financial system; GT Bank’s failures were serious and systemic and resulted in an unacceptable risk of handling the proceeds of crime.”Shrugs

 …but you know what’s more shocking? The FCA has fined them £525,000 earlier in 2013 for the same issue.

Maybe they thought it was a joke?

Well, I guess their money is long …because they agreed to the fine (not like it was optional though ) and because they settled it early, the FCA gave them a 30% discount.

…but reputation in the mu[r]ddd

Netflix On The Come Up

To start with, whoever came up with the name “Netflix and Chill” deserves a bag of accolades. It’s such a sweet name! …and we’ve proceeded to nail the phrase to death, because why not?!

We’re probably all aware of the roller coaster year Netflix had in 2022, although the roller coaster had seats for everyone, including me [but that’t not why we’re here]. Their subscribers’ rates were low. One of their woes was that between January and June, Netflix lost about 1.2M subscribers, which could have been tied to the discovery that most users shared passwords. 

Don’t ask me why I’m looking at you that way. We talked about this, y’all

Anyway, 2023 seems to be their light-at-the-tunnel moment. The company’s stock has gone up by 10% in just a few days in 2023. Now, what changed?

Netflix posted a strong quarterly earnings report and revealed a 2.4 million net subscriber gain (~4.2 million total). The rollout of its less expensive, advertising-supported tier also seems to be well received. The company is taking steps to manage password sharing (cough cough.. I call no names ) in millions of households. The company said password “borrowers” will be able to transfer their profile into their own account, while “sharers” will be able to create sub-accounts for family and friends.

TESLA

I’m not even surprised that your boy is in the news again – the man lives in the spotlight.

Front row, seat call: Seems he has been in a giveaway mode since Q4 of 2022. Because, what’s all the slash in prices for? We need to ring him.

So last year he offered a discount of $7,500 on some of its most-expensive electric cars to “encourage” more sales. They also offered free supercharging for 10,000 miles.

Now, they’ve slashed prices again globally by 20%. Apparently, they’re probably trying to meet up with their rivals and increase demand for their cars. It’s giving pressureeeeee

Musk also said that he acknowledges that the prices were “embarrassingly high” and could hurt demand.I laugh in Spanish because… this man was selling at them astronomically high prices but thanks to competition… he now claims ’embarrasingly high’ – oh dear lord!

Of course, the shares dropped, between Friday and now. They had a poor season in 2022, but 2023 may be even more gloomy…

So, Tomi, what’s the 4-1-1?

The issue is that with the hike in interest rates in the US, Tesla is struggling to maintain cost. Secondly, with the steady rise of competition, there is bigger price war i.e. cutting down on prices to attract and keep customers.

However, is it a catch 22? As the company continues on this keep-customers-at-all-cost path, they keep losing their investors …which makes the stock prices trend downwards.

Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst, said: “I think Tesla knows they are not the only game in town and the Detroit firms are swimming into the deep end with E.V.s. I believe the price reductions signal Tesla’s intention to pull off the Band-Aid and try to go on the attack.”

We will have to see!

…And there you have it!

It’s a wrap!