Business news

Listen to the business news to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

The first item in the news today is the recent elections that took place across the country. This was a crucial vote, which may see a dramatic change in how the country develops over the coming years. Overall, a 54.5 per cent voter turnout was registered. This represents an increase of 11 per cent over the previous election and six per cent above the average for the past 50 years. There has also been a slight change in demographics, with an increase in youth turnout in the 18- to 24- and 24- to 29-year-old brackets. Despite this increase, young people are still less likely to vote than older people; 84 per cent of voters in the 70 plus age group came to the polling stations.

Moving on, the global digital powerhouse ONK today posted quarterly results which were above forecast. Back in March, Tim Bolling, CEO, issued a profit warning over fears that there would be losses following the recall of their leading product, the 40d device. In fact, the company posted quarterly revenue of US$14.8 billion which represents an increase of 11 per cent from the same quarter a year ago. They also announced that they had sold 21 million 40d devices over the quarter. The company has provided the information that with this level of revenue, there will be a gross margin of 34 to 35 per cent, ultimately leading to a US$1.20 per share cash dividend awarded to shareholders.

And in our final news item we ask, will we soon be saying goodbye to coins and notes forever? The nationwide trend of using cashless payment options is increasing. There are a number of reasons for this development. A key reason for this is a growing interest in reducing the number of items people need to leave their homes with. As almost everyone carries a smartphone with them, and many people also have smartwatches, the ability to pay for things using one of these two technologies is particularly appealing. More and more retailers are accepting cashless payments and in some cases they've stopped accepting cash altogether.

Task 1

Exercise

Task 2

Exercise

Discussion

Write a short overview of statistics, figures or trends that you are familiar with.

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Language level

B2 Upper intermediate

Let me tell you about the volatility of Tesla shares, taking as a reference the time from the lowest point of this morning's value (10:25 am) to the final rising value (12:10 pm), as well as the time with the highest value at the beginning (8:40 am) The shares at the beginning time had a value of 444.97 dollars, after one hour it is indicated that this value increased to 447.49 dollars so that to finish these actions achieved a value of 450.47 dollars however if we compare them with the value of the earliest available hour it is indicated that there has been a decrease of approximately 0.42 percent with only 4 hours.

To be honest this one was the most difficult until now, talk about statistics and this kind of thing it’s new for me. I could hardly understand when I first heard the audio and read the transcript. But let’s try.I’ll write about Christianity Christianity the world’s biggest religion with 2.1 billion of adherents according with 2010 researchers (representing 31 per cent of earth’s population) but it’s subject to lose this rank to Islam religion in the next few years. The population of Islam are rising a lot while the Christian population it’s growing gradually. In 2050 they expect the Christian population to be 2.9 of the population and Islam population to be 2.8 which it’s a very close number considering the difference between both now. (Christianity 2.1 / Islam 1.something)

Let me tell you about the COVID-19 situation in my country, whereas I can't come up with any other idea and this theme is the hottest topic around the world. So, we have over 145 000 cases of coronavirus, + 2582 per day. It's almost our national anti record, so the situation is far from the end. I'm happy to know, that over 65000 recovered despite it's a dangerous virus and over health care system is far from ideal (mildly speaking). Of course, there is sad news too, 3023 people are dead. It's a bitter blow for the country and a huge grief for their families. The situation is complicated by the fact that the academic year in schools and universities has restarted. And I'm really worried about that because I have two kids and one of them attends school and the younger one attends kindergarten. I hope we can escape this danger and we try to be careful. And I wish all of you to be safe and healthy. Cheers!

It's interesting to note that more and more people have begun to invest their savings in the stock market, specially in emerging coutries around the world where general interest rates have been dropping continuously. Despite of several positive outcome to economy, in some way government might be concerned as many these new investors haven't been properly educated to analyse and choose investments and prepared for the stock market ups and downs.

Hello Razan Mahairy,

Thank you for your lovely comment. It's great to know we're helping people!

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Dear team. From the lesson above. 'brackets' is mean groups ??? The second question, What does it mean ' the 40d device' ??? Is it including digital camera?? Thank you very much for your answer.

Hello fahri,

In the context of talking about age, 'brackets' means groups, yes.

The 40D device is a product produced by the company ONK.

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

In my country, there is decreasing in ignorance percentage . Surveys show the number of educated people go up to 99% for the ages between 15 and 20 in this year. While the percentage of educated people in the last decade was 89%. In my opinion, this is huge change in demographics of the country.

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