African Thoughts: March 17, 2014

In general the African markets remain dull with foreign participation on the low side. That said, there are still some chunky crosses going through and foreign investors are participating in these….its just the general market trading activity that remains very muted.

Zimbabwe:

Lack of foreign interest in Harare remains. This lack of interest is causing the index to gently depreciate as the Industrials fell by 1.54%. Market volumes remain very low. About the only real excitement for the week was a chunky trade of around 5m Econet at 67c as the Telco accounted for almost half the total weekly turnover. Econet ended the week down 3% at 64.99c while Delta fell by 50bps to 121.99c. Innscor fell by 4% to 72c after their recent interim results showed a fall of 18.9% in attributable earnings.

Nigeria:

The ASI lost 2.01% with every sub-sector losing ground for the week. Banks fell by 2.62% with most of this fall coming late in the week as Tier 1 names sold off. The only gainer in the Tier 1 names was Access which only rose marginally by 13bps as all other names lost decent amount, most notably FBNH (-10.23%, N11.67). Tier 2 names were more solid with Skye Bank rising by 5.62% to N3.76. During the latter part of the week we saw the start of the Banks’ FY13 results with GTB and Zenith both reporting. Cadbury Nigeria also reported their FY13 results over the weekend. In other banking news, Ecobank Transnational forced out CEO Thierry Tanoh. The Consumers lots 1.52% for the week with the softness in the banks carrying over. Dangote Sugar was a big drag on the sector as the name lost 13.39% to N9.44.

Kenya:

Overall a quiet week in Kenya although we saw strength in both the NSE 20 (+1.6%) and the NASI (+1.9%). The NSE 20 is now up 1.2% YTD. Foreign trading was also much reduced and is still below 50% of the total market activity. The most active names were as always the usual suspects with the main names (outside of EABL) all advancing. Safcom was the strongest of these with the Telco gaining 2.6% to KES 12.05 and remained well bid. The big banks both gained with KNCB rising by 2.2% to KES 46 and EqBnk increasing by 1.5% to KES 34. EABl ended the week unchanged at KES 260.

Mauritius:

Despite a 70bp rise in the Sem-7 we saw the broader Semdex fall by 40bps. Demand in the major banks remains strong and we saw MCB increase by 90bps and SBM by 1.90% to Rs215 and Rs1.06 respectively. The hotel stocks are completely reversed though as all names closed in the red, the worst performers being Sun Resorts (-3.8%, Rs38.50) and NMH (-60bps, Rs80).