African Thoughts: July 07, 2014


Nigeria:

It was a relatively quiet week from a foreign activity point of view as turnover fell 14.05% to $158.23m with large block trades once again dominating proceedings. The highlight of the week was a large cross of 200m FBNH where the seller was local while the buyer was foreign. The market had a strong week from a performance point of view with the ASI managing to gain an impressive 2.00%. Banking stocks closed higher with the Index gaining +0.76% thanks to strong moves in ETI (+6.65%), FCMB (+3.81%), GTB (+2.00%) and Diamond Bank (+1.59%). Consumers (+0.15%) also closed the week in the black thanks to gains in 7UP (+10.25%) after releasing better than expected results and NB (+0.87%). Other notable gains were seen in Transcorp which managed to gain +10.55%.

Kenya:

The market closed the week higher in Nairobi with the NSE 20 Index gaining 1.1% while on the negative side turnover fell 21.7% to an 11 week low. Net foreign inflows however increased to $5.3m for the week while participation fell to 44.3%. Housing Finance (13.3%) and Britam (+4.6%) were some of the week’s top gainers after Britam agreed to acquire additional shares in the mortgage company from Equity Bank. Safcom was the most active counter on the bourse last week after the telco filed a complaint with the industry regulator against Equity Bank challenging its planned layering of its MVNO SIM card on Safaricom SIM Cards. Data released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics showed that inflation for June increased by 9bps to 7.39%.

Zimbabwe:

The market managed to close the week higher in Harare with the Industrial Index gaining +0.19%. Another positive was the fact that turnover increased 59.53% to $5.31m with the usual suspects Econet (38%), Delta (35%) and Innscor (10%) dominating activity. Foreign demand was behind the majority of purchases last week as they accounted for $3.87m worth of the buying activity. The YTD loss of the Industrial Index is now at -7.26% after a good second quarter, it will be interesting to see if demand will continue in the third and fourth quarter.

Mauritius:

Not a bad week in Mauritius from a performance point of view with the Sem-7 gaining +0.78% while turnover fell to a 10 week low of $5.47m. SBM (24%) and MCBG (23%) dominated activity last week with the counters closing the week +2.6% and +0.7% higher respectively. Hotel stocks NMH (-2.33%) and Sun Resorts (-2.50%) closed the week lower.

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