African Thoughts: December 12, 2016

Nigeria:

The Nigerian bourse remains utterly rudderless. The ASI closed marginally higher (+30bps) with Banks (+51bps) and Consumers (-78bps) ending the week largely unchanged. Volumes remain extremely low as they have been throughout 2016. The top performing banks were Guaranty (N23.34, +8.51%) followed by ZenithBank (N14.50, +5.07%), ETI (N9.94, +4.63%) and UBA (N4.39, +2.09%). Consumers were dragged lower by the likes of Guinness (N77.90, -12.47%), Unilever (N45.00, -6.25%), Flourmill (N18.50, -5.08%) and Presco (N41.87, -4.99%).

Kenya:

The NSE closed every day last week in the red which meant that the NSE 20 fell by 2.7% and is now down 21.8% YTD. Trading volumes were also drastically reduced as participants are starting to gear down into the end of year. The most active stock for the week was EABL with the brewer closing at KES238.00 (-2.5%). After some strong recent performance we saw Safcom start to come off and the telco shed 4.8% to KES19.00. The banks had a largely subdued week – Equity Bank closed unchanged at KES30.00 while KNCB tumbled by 5.0% to KES28.25.

Zimbabwe:

The Industrials rally continues along unabated with the index gaining a further 6.98% last week (YTD +30.07%). As has been the case recently, this run is driven mostly by aggressive local investors on the back of the new bond notes issuance while foreign investors are taking the opportunity to offload stock at good levels. Along the large caps we saw a massive 9.92% gain in Delta to a year high of 93.96c while Econet rose by 7.08% to 34c.

Mauritius:

The Semdex ticked up by a mere 7bps last week which leaves 2016 performance at just negative 25bps. As with the other African markets, volumes in Mauritius were extremely low as investors start to wind down into the year end. Both banks were marginally weak with MCBG closing down 10bps at Rs214.00 while SBMH closed at Rs6.70 (-90bps).

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