African Thoughts: March 09, 2014

Nigeria:

The Nigerian ASI gained 3.14% last week. The bulk of this gain was achieved on Friday as the ASI rose by 2.25% thanks to strong buying in the banks (+8%). The banks ended the week up 9.79% after GTB and Zenith announced good 2014 results (as mentioned 8% of this gain was on Friday alone). Consumers tried to jump onto the coattails and gained 1.89%. The top gainers list for the week was dominated by the banks, including Zenith Bank (N20.94, +18.98%), UBA (N4.07, +17.29%), UBN (N11.50, +5.00%), Diamond Bank (N4.51, +15.64%), FBNH (N8.81, +14.42%) and Skye Bank (N2.27, +11.82%). The consumers rose by 1.89% supported by gains on NB (N145.15, +3.68%) and Guinness (N128.15, +3.77%) while Nestle remained unchanged at N820.00.

Kenya:

Both the NSE 20 (-2.2%) and the NASI (-1.8%) retreated from the years highs. However market turnover spiked dramatically to an impressive weekly turnover of $76.8m while foreign participation was improved (55%) for the second straight week. As usual, the Big 4 names dominated the trading charts. EABL in particular saw a number of chunky crosses (-3.2%, KES299.00) while telecommunications name Safcom closed unchanged at KES15.80. The 2 big banks both closed lower with Equity Bank closing down 3.7% at KES51.50 and KNCB losing 1.7% to KES59.00.

Zimbabwe:

The first week of March was really slow in Harare while the Industrials slipped by 94bps. Reporting season is underway though as we saw Innscor (and its related subsidiaries Colcom and Natfoods) release interim numbers. Of the notable names to move we saw Econet fall by 2.7% to 50.11c while Delta shed 87bps to 114c. Innscor came off by 1.69% to 58c.

Mauritius:

Both the Semdex and the Sem-10 fell by 80bps last week on the back of weakness across almost all names. Amongst the banks the best performer was SBMH which closed unchanged at Rs1.00 while both MCBG (-1.7%, Rs202) and Bramer Banking (-3.7%, Rs5.20) were soft. National airline Air Mauritius rose by 1.3% to Rs15.60 while all hotels closed in the red. NMH lost 80bps to Rs63.50 while Lux and Sun fell by 2.2% and 1.3% respectively.