African Thoughts: September 08 2014

Nigeria:

It was a slightly better week in Lagos from an activity point of view but still nothing to write home about with turnover increasing +8.47% to $107.4m. A large block trade in DangCem (ca. $18m) was the highlight of the week while Transcorp was also very active over the course of the week after releasing a cautionary. The market closed the week lower with the ASI falling -0.89% as consumer stocks (-2.44%) weighed heavily on the market with the likes of Nestle (-5.65%), Guinness (-2.16%) and NB (-0.52%) dragging the sector lower. Banking stocks also closed the week lower with the index falling -0.58% thanks to Access(-5.76%), UBA (-4.34%) and Zenith (-1.42%) while ETI managed to gain +5.68% after Qatar National Bank announced that they are looking to purchase 12.5% of ETI. Flour Mills released Q1 2014 results which saw PAT fall -28.57%.

Kenya:

It was a very slow week in Nairobi as turnover fell -20.04% to $29.89m with net inflows decreasing -34.1% to $4.8m. On a positive note, the NSE 20 Index touched a new high for 2014 of 5,163.28. Equity Bank managed to gain +2.1% and recorded the highest net inflows for the week of $1.9m. Local buying interest in Centum and Britam pushed the counters to new 52 week highs of KES 57.50 and KES 28.00 respectively. Centum rallied on the news that it had won a $2bn coal plant contract while Britam rallied after posting strong H1 2014 results. On the news front, the Kenyan Central Bank left the benchmark rate unchanged at 8.5% at its policy meeting while inflation for August increased to +8.36%.

Zimbabwe:

It was a much better week in Harare from an activity point of view with turnover increasing +69.44% to $8.5m as foreign interest seemingly returned to the market. Block trades in market heavyweights Delta (27%), Innscor (21%) and Econet (15%) drove activity. Another positive was the fact that the market managed to close in positive territory for the week with the Industrial Index gaining +2.47% decreasing the YTD loss to just -0.42% now. Econet (+10%), Delta (+2.22%) and National Foods (+4.55%) were the main drivers behind the markets performance.

Mauritius:

There was a drop in activity in Port Louis last week with turnover falling -27.97% to $10.3m with the likes of MCBG ($2.96m), MUA ($940k) and SBM ($890k) driving proceedings. The market managed to close in positive territory with the Semdex gaining +0.3% at 2,115. The two major banking stocks closed the week mixed with MCBG falling -0.5% while SBM closed unchanged. Hoteliers LUX (+3.5%) and NMH (+1.15%) had a positive week while SUN closed unchanged.