07/02/2017 BBC Business Live

This is Business Live from BBC News with Rachel Horne and Sally Bundock.

The oil giant made $2.6 billion last year, that's less than half

Live from London, that's our top story on Tuesday 7th February.

With oil prices on their way up and a cut in supply,

does the future look better for the companies that

Also in the programme, cashing in its chips.

Crisis-hit Toshiba takes offers for its memory business as it

looks to cover the cost of its nuclear problems.

And we'll be getting the inside track on how you track

news across the internet and around the world to work out

The co-founder of this company will be giving us the inside track. What

we are sharing, what we are liking and how valuable that data is.

And, the red telephone box is 90 years old, so it is overdue for a

makeover. It is all about getting a new age to look. When did you last

use a phone box? Use the phone -- use the hashtag.

One of the world's biggest energy companies BP has seen another sharp

It's of particular interest this time as oil prices have been

recovering thanks to the agreement reached at the end of last year

between the oil cartel Opec and non-members to cut

The company's preferred measure is underlying

That came in at $400 million in the last three months of 2016.

That means that for the year as a whole BP made $2.6 billion,

But chief executive Bob Dudley said that the year had seen "significant

strides in creating a stronger platform for growth".

Looking back to the beginning of last year, you can see

the shift in the price of oil on global markets.

It bottomed out at $27.88 a barrel in January 2016.

And on Monday it was trading at just over $56.

BP's competitors are also struggling after two years of low oil prices.

Last week, US giant Exxon Mobil reported a 51% fall in full-year

profits and Royal Dutch Shell a 44% dip.

There are wider challenges for BP and others in the industry,

including funding investment in new oil projects,

the rise of renewable-energy sources and for some a concern

about their ability pay to shareholder dividends.

Our Business Editor Simon Jack is with me.

Give us your take. On paper they do not look brilliant. The replacement

cost profit, which adjusts for the fluctuating price of oil, is half of

what it was last year, looking pretty bad. But BP has legacy

issues. In 2010 we were reporting on the Deepwater Horizon explosion,

they had to put $63 billion into cleaning that up and compensating

people, and 7 billion claim in the last year. So although the headline

numbers look worse, this was a year when they started turning the

corner. We have to remember that, because that was an enormous event,

massive cost, and many analysts say Bob Dudley has steered the ship

extremely well, given the challenges. This will be the

argument that comes up when we start talking about his pay. There was a

massive shareholder vote last year, he got paid ?40 million in a year

when BP lost $6.5 billion. If they are making more money this year,

goodness knows what they will pay him. Or did he do a better job this

year than last? He adjusted to the massive crush in price, the clean up

the Gulf of Mexico, some people think, given the hand he was dealt,

he did not do a bad job. They say they are keeping the dividend in

place, which is important for these companies are. And for pensioners

and anybody who has savings. What now for BP? They have streamlined

the business, it is a shadow of the business it was before the explosion

in the Gulf of Mexico. They have scaled back in the North Sea as

well, they have mothballed their drilling off the southern coast of

Australia, but they are hanging on. They have discovered more oil than

they sold last, so that gives you an idea they are expecting to be able

to balance their books at 16 dollars a barrel. -- $60. The dividend yield

is 6%. When it gets that high, a lot of investors think it cannot last,

but they are convinced it is OK for the time being. Because of the

disaster in the Mexico golf, it is not where it was. It used to be

slightly ahead of Shell. It is very much an American company as well,

when the American operations got hit, it knocked the stuffing out of

BP. You could argue that slimming down the company at a moment when

oil prices collapsed was not a bad thing. It imposed a bit of

discipline. They are not the same company they were. They are in

better shape than a couple of years ago.

As we have already mentioned, their shares are down today by 2% on the

FTSE 100. 30 more US technology firms have

signed a brief opposing President Trump's immigration ban,

bringing the total The new signatories include Tesla,

Adobe, HP and Evernote. A US federal appeals court will hear

arguments this Tuesday over whether to restore President Trump's

travel ban on people from seven The President of the European

Central Bank Mario Draghi has rejected claims that Germany

is manipulating It follows comments made

in a document published by the US Treasury, which accuses Germany

of undervaluing Europe's currency A South Korean company wants

to buy part of Toshiba's This is all about sheep are needed

to raise some funds pretty quickly? It is. It is not just any old chip

maker that is looking to buy the stake, it is the world like second

largest chip-maker after some song. It is all according to sources in

local media and elsewhere, that they have submitted an initial bid,

although the size of the stake has although the size of the stake has

not been decided. Toshiba needs to raise funds to offset a

multi-million dollar write-down it has had on its American nuclear

power business. Both spokespeople from both companies have not

commented on the specifics of the process, but analysts say that Hynix

would benefit from Toshiba's technological know-how. Their

products are used in long-term data storage. Demand for these chips has

risen sharply, mainly due to the growing need for quicker processing

of smartphones and other mobile devices. At the same time, Toshiba

is planning to stop building nuclear power plants, after incurring liens

of dollars of losses. Overnight, the US and Asian

markets were down. The Dow was pulled down

by a fall in oil price, while markets also continue to wait

for detail on Donald Trump's And that uncertainty over Trump

was also one of the factors causing the Asian markets to fall,

yen and gold rising as investors There are also concerns

about the upcoming European elections, so let's see how

the European markets are doing. They have been open for four minutes

-- 40 minutes. And Samira Hussain has

the details about what's ahead Company earnings continue today. The

largest American auto-maker General Motors will report. America's auto

industry has received a lot of attention from the president. He

wants to see more jobs created here in the US. We can't be sure that

their earnings, which are expected to cap a record year, could get some

attention from the commander-in-chief. Walt Disney will

also report earnings, it seems the success of its latest animation

movie will help revenues for the quarter. But the last few months

have not been too kind to them, it has not had that many put dusters.

Investors will be paying attention to the sports network ESPN, which is

the real cash cow for them. And Rachel was sinking Let It Go!

Can you do a rendition? Nobody needs to hear that!

Joining us is Jeremy Cook, who is chief economist

I have not seen the letter macro frozen! I have three boys, but I

managed to get one of them to watch it!

Something we must not avoid, how China is propping up its currency.

It is burning through its currency reserves. It has three Delian

dollars of reserves. -- $3 billion. -- $3 trillion. The Chinese currency

has weakened a fairly dramatically. A lot of fears are bound the Donald

Trump presidency, whether he calls China a currency minute later, as he

threatened during the campaign. With increased outflows, people moving

money out, we have seen the people. I could China stepping in and

burning through money that they may have in reserves to make sure the

currency stays stable. It is subject to keep an eye on as far as

international trade businesses go. They need to make sure they are

protected against that. We mentioned on the market is the French market

is down slightly. The markets have been burned by politics repeatedly

in the last year. French elections coming up, the markets feeling

pretty wobbly. We had a big speech from Emmanuel macron last night.

From toffee the has issues around nepotism and his wife taking a job

from him. Marine Le Pen is still in the lead as far as the first-round

poling goes. We have seen in Asia in the recent weeks concerns around

what happens with this election, whether we start to see further

pressures on the euro. There is political risk, because we have

France, the Netherlands and Germany, and Germany, their industry or

production numbers are quite bad for January. They were down about 3%,

the worst number for a fair while, and also a recent poll suggests

Angela Merkel's party are now second in the polls. It will be an

interesting year for Germany. A lot for markets to keep their heads

around. Jeremy, you will tell us when you were last in a telephone

box later! Still to come, we'll speak

to the man turning social media into popular media as we get

the inside track on how news stories You're with Business

Live from BBC News. The Government will be setting out

plans later today to tackle what they're calling England

and Wales' broken housing market. The Government says 250,000

new homes are needed each year and have admitted

they are lagging behind schedule. Ben Thompson is at a house

factory in Alfreton. Sorry, this is then earlier, who

shared some news on that story. Our prefab homes the answer to our

housing crisis? They say so. They build these things in less than

eight weeks, from start to finish. What do they look like? On the left,

the toilet, the stairs, this is one of the bedrooms, and here you get

the kitchen. What is different is that everything is done right here

in the factory. The fridge is already installed, there is a

dishwasher with all of the plumbing, the oven and the hob are in. This

house is good to go as soon as it leaves the factory, it just needs to

be plugged in. Is it enough to solve the housing crisis? The Government

set a target of a million new homes by 2020, building a 300,000 every

year. At the moment we are building less than half of that. Today the

Government is unveiling a housing White Paper, with rules and

regulations that will encourage the house-builders to get more homes

built. Will it be enough to help drink down prices that have meant

many people cannot get on the ladder at all? We will find out if and when

the house-builders start building more homes.

I thought we were going to talk to Ben live, I am a bit disappointed!

We are missing Ben. Good news from Hornby. They have had

a rough time for some time. Their turnaround plan is on track.

Again! Picking up steam! For your revenues will still go down

slightly, but they have sold their site in Margate for ?2.25 million,

and they think things will get better for them. They have been

struggling, because the demand is going down, but also the weakness of

the sterling has hit the company hard, they have been battling with

the weakness of sterling since the decision in June last year to exit

the EU. You're watching Business Live.

Our top story: The oil giant BP

has seen another sharp It made $2.6 billion in 2016

which is less than half of what it made the year before as it continues

to struggle with low oil prices. A quick look at how

markets are faring. BP is a big factor for the FTSE 100.

At the open of trade BP fell down around 2%. The FTSE is the one

market with its head above water. Germany and France down slightly.

How can you tell if a story is going to go viral?

It's not all about the entertainment value - increasingly companies

want to track what consumers are saying so they can identify

the content that's most effective for their business.

For those in the know it's called "social velocity",

a formula of the tweets, shares, likes, comments and other

One firm harnessing that technology is Dublin-based NewsWhip.

It's analytics software processes millions of news stories every day,

from videos to social media posts in more than 60 countries,

predicting which will grab those eyeballs -

NewsWhip now has more than 320 clients globally.

Customers include media firms,

such as Associated Press - us here at the BBC -

Buzzfeed and the Guardian to big corporate brands including Reebok,

Well, we are joined by the companies co-founder

and Chief Technical Officer, Andrew Mullaney.

Good to have you on the programme. Thank you for having me. I know here

at the BBC we're obsessed with what NewsWatchers are looking online and

what digital video they're downloading and why and how many

shares, how many likes, that information is what you provide?

Absolutely, yeah. For the first time we can really measure what people

care about in real-time. So, that's what all our customers use it for is

to understand what type of content engages people on social media. This

is something you were providing this information to consumers, but you

flipped to provaid a service to businesses. Was that purely based on

financials? Not really. We noticed that the journalists and the media

creators were using the free service way more and that they wanted much

deeper features. So we decided to concentrate on providing for these

people and of course, there was a financial benefit as they can pay

whereas most newsreaders are free. So what caused you and your

co-founder to start this? Why did you think of this business in the

first place and it is dependant on your technology, isn't it?

Absolutely, yes. Paul started out creating normal news and noticed the

difficulty in trying to make money online so we were both involved in

start-ups at the time and we were discussing ideas and I said well,

maybe consider trying to figure out the good stuff. There was so much

stuff out there and he noticed the journalists were obsessed with the

social numbers of their content and that's where the idea came. He said

why not try and get the social numbers for all content out there

and see what happens and that's where it started. Now, you cover 60

countries. I'm interested to know how do you work out what people are

going to be more interested in because you also try to predict it.

So is there a story that has global appeal or do you find certain

countries are more into sports stories or human stories? We're

measuring these huge amount of data signals, but it is all about human

engagement and there is a human being behind all of these

engagements. So the types of content that can do well for example are one

we saw the other day which was this kid that got lost in Canada in the

freezing cold and fell approach sleep in the snow and his dog came

out and lay on top of him to keep him warm and kept him alive. This

did very well in this local area and got grabbed by the bigger media

agencies because it is a beautiful story.

The bigger media agencies, people like the BBC who pay for your

services, what is it that they're getting out of it? You're telling

them well this story was really important, are you expecting those

companies to make decisions about where to put stories on their

website in order to get more online users? Absolutely, yeah. To

understand everything from, you know, what type of headlines you

use, what length of video, what type of words do you use, you know, which

stories are of interest and also maybe where to concentrate their

journalists because now they can tell in real-time where the

engagement is. So what's going to be next on your radar as it were? I

would imagine when you started out, when did you start this company? We

started five years ago. I imagine there were not many other companies

like yours with this technology, but they are all catching up fast. So

how are you going to diversify? For us, it is to continue growth. We

have 50 staff. 15 of which are in New York and we launched our new

analytics product. We're excited about that and we're just going to

continue serving up the best content to the story tellers of the world.

Andrew, we appreciate your time. Fascinating, especially from our

point of view. Thank you very much. Cheers.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the signing

of the Maastricht Treaty, officially known as the Treaty

Back then there was a feeling of optimism and hope

about what the EU could achieve for the prosperity

Few would have predicted the financial and political

challenges the Union would come up against a quarter

Andrew Walker's been taking a look back in time.

Maastricht 1992 and a blueprint is agreed for a new and deeper

programme of European integration. It was here that the euro was

conceived. This was a moment of hope and optimism at least for European

political leaders. A quarter of a century on, the EU is

blue and yellow's flag looks tattered. We've had arguably still

have, the eurozone financial crisis, one important member state, Britain,

deciding to leave and the rise of anti-EU political groups in several

countries and perhaps a chance that they will take power this year in

countries that were founder members of the European project, France and

the Netherlands. And now the election of Donald Trump to the US

presidency creates new and unpredictable challenges for

uranium. He doesn't seem to think much of the EU. He said the British

decision to leave was so smart. He has certainly rattled Brussels. The

President of the European Council Donald Tusk wrote to members saying

the changes put the EU in a difficult position. Maastricht was

intended to create a congealial environment for business with less

uncertainty. It feels like a long time ago.

The iconic red telephone box gets a redesign. It is 90 years old, the

old phone box? So, instead of people using it just for calling someone,

you can use it for maps. You can use it browse the internet. It is now a

wi-fi hotspot. Well Will that cause a resurge in the use of the phone

boxes? I would imagine they are hardly ever used. Most are

vandalised? I would use them to get out of the rain or hide from someone

on the street! We have had quite a few tweets. Some

people saying, "I can't find one." Ian said, "It is 20 years since I

used a phone box." Ian said he used one in 2007 when his Nokia died. The

question is will there be a resurgence in the use of the phone

boxes? I don't know if there would? If your mobile phone doing

everything from your banking to travel, to your whole schedule, I

doubt people will want to tie themselves down to a phone box. The

only thing I see is people having selfies, they want that photo of the

red phone box. Let's move on. Other stories in the press today. We've

got a flying car. I love this one. What do you reckon. Would you get in

one? I would get in one, I don't think I will see one in my lifetime.

I think it is Jettison stuff. If they could work on the cars at the

moment. They have got a Nasa engineer? It seems like another way

of Uber to burn through investors cash. I love the idea, but I'm

scared of heights! An interesting story in the Guardian

about Bermuda which has been sort of slated as a tax haven in president

press. Bermuda saying that the UK is a tax haven because people aren't

here for the weather? No, we're not. I'm certainly not. Are you here for

the tax haven? I'm here for the quality of life let's put it that

way. The UK has the most billionaires living in it especially

London as a city and the ability for non-doms and we haven't really

talked about non-doms in the UK for many, many years, non-doms to not

pay tax in the UK has made sure it is a beneficial regime for them to

live under. The non-dom rules are changing in April? They are set to

change, but I think this is Bermuda firing back to say obviously don't

slate us when you have your own beneficial rules and I think there

is a bit of post Brexit anger there given the impact on the

Commonwealth. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you too for your company. We

will see you tomorrow. That's it from Business Live. There will be

more business news on the web page and on World Business Report.

Bye-bye. Hello there. Cloud and rain that

affected most areas overnight has now cleared away for the vast

majority leaving a mixture of sunshine and showers through the

rest of today.