Trading Day – Elon Musk becomes sole director of Twitter

Elon Musk became the sole director of Twitter after dismissing all other board members.

Musk has also called on more than 50 of his trusted Tesla employees, mostly software engineers from the Autopilot team, to do code reviews on the social network.

According to unnamed Twitter employees, Musk is pressing his engineers to learn everything they can about Twitter as quickly as possible.

US markets started the week down in anticipation of Wednesday’s Fed interest rate decision. The S&P 500 closed 0.8% lower, and the Nasdaq fell 1%.

The Nikkei 225 is up 0.3% in early morning trade, while the Hang Seng showed a big jump and is up 5.4%.

In local news, Octodec reported good growth with headline earnings per share (HEPS) of R2.59 and more than doubled its dividend to R1.30 per share.

Meanwhile, Sasol has launched a new $750 million bond offering.

Here is the biggest news of the day.

• Octodec reports good growth in earnings and more than doubles its dividend. Headline earnings per share (HEPS) for the year has increased 46% to R2.59. Revenue showed more moderated growth at 6% to R1.94 billion. Distributable income per share increased by 30% to R1.75, and the company decided to pay a dividend for the year of R1.30 per share, an increase of 160%.

• Sasol launches a new $750 million bond offering. The company’s subsidiary, Sasol Financing USA, will offer guaranteed senior unsecured convertible bonds due 2027. The bonds will be issued around 8 November and pay a coupon of between 4% and 4.5% semi-annually. The bonds will be into Sasol ordinary shares, subject to approval at a shareholder meeting. The proceeds of the bonds will be used for general corporate purposes, including the refinancing of debt.

• Transnet has lifted its force majeure across all port terminals. The company said that container handling operations are ready to return to pre-strike levels of activity.

• Sanlam has completed the disposal of its operations in large stand-alone retirement fund administration to Alexander Forbes. After fulfilling all the suspensive conditions, the transaction will take effect today.

• Elon Musk became the sole director of Twitter after dismissing all other board members. He has also pulled more than 50 of his trusted Tesla employees, mostly software engineers from the Autopilot team, to do code reviews on the social network. According to unnamed Twitter employees, Musk is pressing his engineers to learn everything they can about Twitter as quickly as possible, from source code to content moderation and data-privacy requirements, so he can redesign the platform.

• The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has increased its interest rate by 0.25% to a nine-year peak of 2.85%. The bank now expects inflation to peak around 8% later this year, up from a previous forecast of 7.75%.