African Thoughts: June 15, 2015


Nigeria:

Activity increased (+2.95%) ever so slightly in Lagos last week as turnover amounted to $85.79m with most foreign participants still seemingly happy to sit on the sidelines for now. Zenith and Unilever dominated what little action there was with the latter's global holding company purchasing shares in the domestic listed unit on the open market. The market closed lower with the ASI falling -0.13% thanks to a fall in banking stocks with the sector closing -0.93% lower as mid-tier banks Fidelity (-5.88%) and Diamond (-5.41%) dragged the sector lower. Consumers on the other managed to close in positive territory with the Index gaining +0.93% thanks to brewers Guinness (+1.82%) and NB (+1.53%). Skye Bank is considering adopting a holding company structure as the bank disclosed that it has engaged the services of a consultant to look at the benefits of the banking model.

Kenya:

The NSE 20 Index touch a new low for the 4th consecutive week, touching 4,744.66 while turnover improved 3.7% to $31.3m as foreigners (60.1%) dominated proceedings and were net buyers ($470k). NSE was rather active and recorded a net foreign inflow of $3.2m while Safcom saw the largest foreign out flows ($2.3m). The Government abandoned capital gains tax in favour of a 0.3% levy on share trading. The MPC increased the benchmark rate from 8.5% to 10% in order to try to curb the slide in the Shilling.

Zimbabwe:

It was another dire week in Harare in terms of both activity and performance with turnover amounting to $3.49m while the Industrial Index fell -0.84% taking the YTD loss to -6.51%. Innscor (58%) dominated what little activity there was while heavyweights Econet and Delta were extremely quiet as foreigners remain all-but absent. A slight positive was the first new listing in three years as Pro-plastics listed last week.

Mauritius:

It was a rather average week from an activity point of view in Port Louis as turnover amounted to $6.78m with MCBG and SBMH accounting for the bulk of turnover as foreigners remain net sellers across the board. The two major banking stocks ended the week mixed with MCBG gaining +0.7% while SBMH closed unchanged. Hoteliers were also mixed with NMH falling -0.48%, SUN finished unchanged while LUX managed to gain +0.4%.

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