African Thoughts: June 13, 2015


Nigeria:

Volumes remain woeful in Lagos as many investors happy to remain on the sidelines in the absence of any catalyst. Foreign investors are also rather quiet as they remain to see how the Buhari regime pans out. As is normally the case in a low volume environment, the ASI just drifted lower with no real direction and closed the week down 2.49%. The NSE Banking index lost 3.11% during the week triggered by losses on the likes of Access Bank (N5.09, -5.04%), GT Bank (N26.11, -2.94%) and UBA (N4.20, -9.87%). The Consumers were down by 4.19% during the week with losses in PZ (N28.95, -9.36%), Unilever (N39.90, -8.28%) and Guinness (N139.80, -8.03%).

Kenya:

Both the NASI (-1.3%) and the NSE 20 (-1.8%) closed the week at 2015 lows. Turnover fell by 31% from the previous week although it still remains rather active especially in the large cap names. All large cap names were flat to lower for the week. The most active stock was Equity Bank which closed down 1.1% at KES 44.75 while KNCB closed flat at KES 55.00. Safcom fell by 2.1% to KES 16.00 while EABL ended at KES 280.00 (-3.4%). There were a good few local-local crosses in Centum (-2.4%, KES 62.00).

Zimbabwe:

Zimbabwe had its first real week of electronic trading although volumes still remain woeful. The index slipped by a further 92bps with Delta (-2.75%, 97.25c) the real drag on the index. Econet closed unchanged at 35c.

Mauritius:

As with the other African markets, the bourse is not attracting much interest currently. As such both the Semdex (-21bps) and the Sem-10 (-39bps) ended the week soft. Volumes were also rather generally dull with foreign investors skewed to the sell side.

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