African Thoughts: November 14, 2016

Nigeria:

It was another disappointing week from an activity point of view as investors continue to sit on the sidelines with turnover falling -7.83% to $23.55m. Guaranty Trust Bank dominated what little activity there was. The market continued to come under pressure with the ASI falling -3.00%, taking the YTD loss to -8.63%. Banking stocks came under a bit of pressure with the sector falling -2.11% thanks to the likes of GTB (-4.83%), Access (-4.50%), Stanbic (-2.94%) and ETI (-0.10%). Consumers fared slightly better, but still closed in negative territory, with the sector closing -0.55% lower. There were some heavy losses in Cadbury (-14.13%), PZ Cussons (-8.39%), 7UP (-5.00%) and Unilever (-3.80%). Unfortunately with the market being so dull, there is nothing else to report from Lagos and we expect the trend to continue for the remainder of 2016.

Kenya:

The market managed to close higher for the third straight week with the NSE 20 Index gaining +0.4%, trimming the YTD loss to -19.2%, as foreign investors turned net buyers to the tune of $1.73m. It was a slightly better week in terms of activity as turnover increased +10.6% to $26.05m thanks to foreign investor participation which increased to 68.1%. Safcom remained the most active counter for the week and accounted for 33% of turnover. The telco however came under a bit of pressure from foreign sellers and closed the week -2.4% softer. The usually illiquid Centum recorded the highest net foreign inflows to the tune of $1.2m ahead of H1 2016 results due out this week, while EABL (-3.9%) recorded the highest net foreign outflows ($610k). It was a mixed picture in the banking sector with EQBNK gaining +2.4% while KNCB closed the week unchanged on low volume after releasing Q3 2016 numbers.

Zimbabwe:

It was another impressive week in Harare from a performance point of view with the Industrial Index gaining +2.39%, taking the YTD gain to +7.29%. There were some good performances in NatFoods (+11.67%) and Delta (+2.74%) after the latter released H1 2017 results. It was unfortunately a rather dull week from an activity point of view as turnover fell -24.12% to $3.1m with Delta accounting for 41% of total value traded.

Mauritius:

The market closed the week ever so slightly in negative territory with the Semdex closing -0.34% lower, taking the YTD loss to -0.73%. It was an average week from a turnover point of view with total value traded amounting to $7.88m as MCBG and SBMH accounted for 60.7% of total turnover while foreign investors were net sellers to the tune of $3.1m. MCBG closed the week -2.29% lower at Rs213 after going ex-div, while SBMH closed -0.29% lower. PBL closed the week -1.2% lower after releasing Q1 2017 results. Hoteliers had a rather strong week with NMH (+4.1%), LUX (+0.4%) and SUN (+0.3%) all closing higher.