African Thoughts: August 20, 2012

With the Northern Hemisphere wrapping up their summer and everyone seemingly absent from the global investment arena, volumes have fallen off a cliff over the last few weeks both in Africa and globally. With the extreme lack of volumes and news from last week as well as most African markets being closed for a day or two this week for Eid celebrations there is not much to report. Below is a list of some of the best and worst performing markets across Africa for the week ending 17 August 2012.

Some of the exceptions to the weekly strength were:

Egypt:

Egypt was the strongest market in Africa last week with the EGX 30 Index gaining 3.9%. The rally was spurred by the major changes that were made to the Egyptian army heads by the president, as well as the Qatar government’s deposit of $2bn in the Central Bank. Another positive factor behind the rally was the World Bank’s approval of a $200m loan to the country.

Zimbabwe:

With only three trading days last week due to public holidays the Zimbabwean market ended the week mixed with the Industrial Index gaining 0.58% to close at 133.96 while the Mining Index closed unchanged at 89.04. CBZ released interim results which saw income increase 16.8% while group PAT came in at $18.3m. Barclays also released interim results with total income increasing by 13%. On the economic front, inflation for July slowed to 3.94% from 3.97% in June.

Tanzania:

The Tanzanian market closed the week in positive territory with the DSEI gaining 0.20% to close at 1,442.38. The catalyst behind the move higher came in the form of NMB as the company released quarterly results which saw interest income increase by 51%, the name closed 2.15% higher on the week. CRDB released Q2 results with pretax profits increasing 21% while interest income increased by 31%.

Zambia:

Zambia was one of the weaker markets from last week with the All Share Index falling 1.6% to close at 3,866.84. Zambia Sugar was the major driver behind the move lower with the name falling 8.7%. This should however be taken with a pinch of salt as there was a tiny amount of shares that traded at 315 on Friday the 10th of August which gave an unrealistic value of the share price to close the prior week.

Mauritius:

Mauritius also came under a fair amount of pressure with the Semdex falling 0.8% to close at 1,718.31. There was a decent amount of activity in MCB as 372k shares traded over the week thanks to a few large crosses with the counter falling 1.8% to close at 164. SBM was however rather quiet and closed the week unchanged at 82. There was a substantial cross in PIM on Friday as 169.6k shares crossed at 165. Tourist arrivals fell by 2.4% to 76,166 in July Statistics Mauritius announced on Friday.

Kenya:

Extremely quiet week in Kenya last week with average daily value traded (excluding Friday) amounting to a paltry $1.77m. There was however a substantial increase in activity on Friday ($5.17m) as large crosses went through in EABL and Equity Bank as foreigners were involved in both sides of the names. The market closed the week in negative territory with the NSE 20 Index falling 0.40% to close at 3,814.10. CFC Stanbic Holdings released H1 2012 results with EPS increasing 45.4%. All eyes this week will be on EABL which is set to announce full-year 2012 results on Friday.