African Thoughts: May 15, 2017

Nigeria:

The bulls finally returned to the Nigerian bourse with the ASI rising by an impressive 7.46%. On a similarly pleasing note, we saw decent volumes return for the first time in months. Both Banks (+11.18%) and Consumers +13.36%) had impressive weeks. The week initially started with a noticeable trend whereby foreign investors were mostly buyers while most selling was local. As the week progressed there were some decent crosses from both local and foreign investors. The week also started with most of the action in the banks but as the week progressed this diversified and we saw nice crosses in some of the consumers (NB, Nestle, Flourmills) as well as DangCem.

Kenya:

In Nairobi we saw results come out for KNCB (2017 Q1) and Safcom (FY17). The market spent most of the time digesting these and with most eyes on Nigeria, the market was relatively quiet although the NSE 20 did improve by 3.10%. As usual, the lion’s share of the turnover went through in Safcom. The telco continues to grind higher and rose by another 2.53% to KES20.25. EABL is a bit hit-and-miss currently, and we saw 1 or 2 blocks in the name although the brewer did drift lower to KES229.00. The banks had a mixed week – Equity Bank fell by 5.07% to KES32.75 while KNCB increased by 6.06% to KES35.00.

Zimbabwe:

It was a very slow week in Zimbabwe on the activity front with total value traded amounting to a boring $2.2m with some small crosses in CBZ, ZPI and Zimplow. On the positive side, the market managed to close the week higher with the Industrial Index gaining +1.06% thanks to Econet (+5.75%) and Innscor (+2.12%) while Delta closed +0.57% higher after releasing FY 2017 results on Wednesday.

Mauritius:

In Port Louis, we witnessed the Semdex climb by 1.5%. The main story is how MCBG continues to break uncharted territory as it rose by 6.9% (biggest weekly rise since January 2011) to an all-time high of Rs245.00. Turnover also remains heavily focused on the banking giant. MCBG also released 2017 Q3 results late on Friday.

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