African Thoughts: June 01, 2015

Nigeria:

It was a funny old week in Lagos as for most of the week the market was all but shut as very little volumes were trading. This exploded on Thursday as a number of chunky crosses went through ahead of the Friday holiday for President Buhari's inauguration. The ASI closed the week marginally positive although both major indices closed in the red. The Banking index lost 1.00% during the week triggered by losses on the likes of Zenith Bank (N21.44,-3.64%) and GTB (N28.95,-0.52%). The NSE Consumer Index closed 1.04% lower for the week due to losses on Nestle (N850.00,-3.52%) and NB(N150.10,-2.07%) although this was partially offset by Guinness (N163.00, +4.68%).

Kenya:

A rather active week in Kenya as we saw both the NSE 20 and the NASI touch 2015 lows. Most of the weakness was on the back of foreign selling with Safcom clocking the 6th consecutive week of the largest foreign outflows. Of the large caps, the only gainer was EqBnk which closed up 1.1% at KES47.25. The other 3 large caps closed down; Safcom (-2.2%, KES15.85), KNCB (-5%, KES56.50) and EABL (-30bps, KES300.00). There was a strong gain in BATK (+5.8%, KES772.00) and BRIT (+3.5%, KES22.25) on the back of local buying while CFC took a big hit (-12%, KES103.00). Please note that today is a holiday in Kenya.

Zimbabwe:

The Industrials (-1.91%) continues to weaken on low volumes. The lack of interest towards the ZSE is actually rather alarming but understandable considering the current macro picture in the country. The Index is now down 6.04% for the YTD, with weekly losers headed by Econet (-8.16%, 45c), Delta (-1.78%, 105.1c) and OKZim (-10%, 9c).

Mauritius:

The Sem-10 and the Semdex closed the week 1.7% and 1.2% lower respectively. The main laggards were the major banks as we saw MCBG shed 1.5% to Rs202.00 while SBMH closed 2.1% lower at Rs0.93.

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