African Thoughts: February 22, 2016


Nigeria:

The ASI fell by a further 1.04% last week and is now down a mammoth 14.70% YTD. Volumes also remain ridiculously low with some days the total turnover not even cracking $5m. The biggest drag on the index was market heavyweight DangCem which fell by 4.55% to N139.83. The Banks rose by 4bps with gains on the likes of ETI (N15.60, +5.76%), GTBank (N16.87, +1.93%) and UBA (N3.00, +3.09%). The NSE Consumer index was also up by 0.21% thanks to NB (N99.99, +2.66%) and Nestle (N700.00, +0.72%).

Kenya:

The NASI gained 10bps while the NSE 20 rose by 1.2% last week. However, these indices are still down 3.4% and 5.1% YTD. Market volumes were woeful last week with foreign investors recording the highest net outflows for any week thus far in 2016. The major activity was focused on the large caps, particularly Safcom which rose by 30bps to KES15.85 while KNCB closed the week unchanged at KES39.50. There was also some mild trading in EABL (+40bps, KES282) and Bamburi (+60bps, KES181).

Zimbabwe:

The ZSE continues to bleed at an alarming rate as it fell by a further 1.9% last week (now down 13.57% YTD). The 2 largest cap names Delta and BAT fell by 95bps (52c) and 4.17% (1150c) respectively. There were also heavy losses in Simbisa (-4.7%, 14.2c) and Barclays (-7.89%, 3.5c). Econet closed the week unchanged at 22.05c. Volumes remain woeful across the board and interest in the market remains low.

Mauritius:

The Semdex fell by 1.4% while the Sem-10 fared marginally worse as it fell by 1.7%. However, both these indices are marginally in the black thus far for 2016. The major story in Mauritius were the massive crosses that went through in NMH. Many of these were strategic shifts with ENL Groupd announcing that ENL Land and Rogers and Co had increased its stake in NMH from 24.05% to 29.87% with selling coming from PAD, Kingston Asset Management and Taylor Smith. In normal trading the bulk of the action once again went through in MCBG (-1.1%, Rs206.50) and SBMH (-1.5%, Rs0.67).

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