African Thoughts: November 03, 2014

Nigeria:

The ASI spent most of last week rooted onto the back foot. The banks (-6.12%) and consumers (-4.85%) were the main culprits for the weakness. In the consumers there were losses in the likes of Guinness (N161.50, -11.26%), NB (N162.00, -4.71%, Nestle (N980.00, -1.90%), Cadbury (N42.78, -14.25%) and PZ (N23.84, -11.67%). Across the banking sector, most of the banking sector stocks closed downwards with the exception of ETI (19.00, +4.05%) and Sterling bank (N2.36, +5.83%). Access Bank (N8.50, -1.16%), GT Bank (N25.00, -8.42%), UBA (N4.75, -16.08%), FBNH (N11.58, -6.01%) and Zenith bank (N21.20, -6.15%) all ended the week with losses. Other notable losses were seen on the likes of Transcorp (N4.04, -19.20%) and Lafarge Africa (N109.99, -5.12%). Results season was in full swing for the week as we saw the likes of Zenith Bank, FBNH, Fidelity Bank, UBA, Skye Bank, ETI, Diamond Bank, Nestle, Lafarge Africa, Unilever and Guinness post results.

Kenya:

The NSE 20 closed the week very slightly lower than where it opened while activity was much improved thanks to increased activity on the large caps. Foreign investors were net sellers for the 4th consecutive week while overall participation remains at around 50/50 between local and foreign participants. As usual the most active names were the large cap names. The large banks were the single 2 most active names for the week as we saw Equity Bank closed at KES 5.50 (-1%) and KNCB close at KES 54.50 (-1.8%). Safcom also lost ground as it closed at KES 12.15 (-80bps). EABL gained a solid 2.2% to KES 280 while BATK closed at KES 1036 (+4.6%) after some chunky action in the name.

Zimbabwe:

The Harare bourse continues to limp along on extremely dull volumes (last week was the lowest USD volumes for 2014). The index remains on the back foot though as it lost another 2.74% for the week currently down 11.99% YTD. The main drags on the index were the large caps: Econet (-5.56%, 68c); Delta (-6.5%, 115c) and BATZ (-3.85%, 1250c).

Mauritius:

Both the Semdex (+20bps) and the Sem-10 (+10bps) posted marginal gains last week. In the banks we saw MCBG close marginally lower at Rs208.75 while SBMH closed unchanged at Rs1.04. In the hotel sector we saw NMH close unchanged at Rs88.00 while Sun Resorts and Lux closed higher by 4.3% (Rs46.95) and 1.3% (Rs57.50) respectively.