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Insert chicken puns here

Look, the pun opportunities when it comes to poultry are eggstraordinary. If the subject line of this morning's Ghost Mail did nothing for you, then I give up trying to make you laugh through the pain.

Astral Foodsnt> is currently losing R2 on every kilogram of chicken that it sells. There is a perfect storm of high feed prices, immense pressure on consumers and load shedding for good measure. Unless feed prices come down significantly or Astral manages to raise prices, it's hard to see how the next financial period won't also be a mess.

You can get all the details on this story and Quilter's performance in the UK by reading Ghost Bites this morning>>>

And remember, for the best weekly update on the JSE's biggest stories, add the Ghost Wrap podcast to your podcast library. Brought to you by Mazars, the latest podcast covers Nampak, Steinhoff, Richemont, BHP, Woolworths, Mr Price and Spar. Find it here>>>

Cloud nein?

If you were screaming at your emails yesterday morning, you weren't the only one. Microsoft suffered a global outage in its services, affecting Teams, Outlook and other systems. Unlike the problem of slowing growth, the technical problems were a temporary issue.

In the results for the three months ended December, we've gone from gushing over Cloud to getting all excited about AI computing. Satya Nadella, one of the best CEOs in the world, is generally rather good at skating to where the cluck is going. With my final chicken joke for the morning behind us (in an ice hockey wrapper for good measure), I can confirm that group revenue onl y increased by 7% on a constant currency basis. Diluted earnings per share fell by 3% on the same basis.

In news that might leave a few people #humbled and others extremely #grateful, LinkedIn increased its revenue by 14% in constant currency. Windows OEM can't say the same, with revenue falling 39%.

In case you're wondering whether Microsoft still needs Activision Blizzard, a drop in Xbox content and services of 8% in constant currency might answer your question. Yes they do, in case that's not obvious.

At some point, I'll add more to my Microsoft position. I maintain that this is one of the best companies in the world.

Currency markets are still range-bound

The rand traded in a tight range yesterday as the market holds its breath ahead of the MPC meeting and GDP da ta out of the US. Later today, we will have our hands on both data updates.

TreasuryONE notes that market expectations for the MPC meeting are for a hike of 25 - 50 basis points, with the tone of the Governor's speech being an important driver of momentum in the rand after the announcement.

Have you met Trive yet?

There's a new player in town when it comes to stockbrokers. Trive South Africa is part of an international financial services group that is investing in the South African market, a lovely show of faith in our local financial industry.

To learn more about this gateway to the JSE and global markets, listen to CEO Travis Robson on Episode 108 of Magic Markets>>>

Have a great Thursday!