Movers & Shakers: August 12, 2013

Botswana: DCI +0.12%, USD 155k

Another pretty dull day in Gaborone as just some trading in the normally illiquid Engen (750t) and Primetime (225t) took place. The usual suspects like Letshego and Choppies were woefully quiet.

Egypt: EGX 30 +0.39%, USD 71m

The market ended the day in positive territory, inching the EGX30 index 0.39% to close at 5,638.29 points on above average volume of USD 71m. Local investors mainly institutions continued to build positions using OCI's cash proceeds and targeting blue-chips alongside the real estate sector in particular leaving the likes of COMI, ETEL, ESRS, TMGH and OCDI up 1.25%, 0.22%, 1.13%, 4.63% and 7.37% respectively. It's worth pointing out that TMGH's rally was due to the company's announcement that it will start its Medical City construction early 2014 with EGP2.7bn investments. Foreign investors continue to trim the market and were clearly heavy sellers in OCI today as it seems there were left-overs that missed the tender offer.

Kenya: NSE 20 +0.26%, USD 2.7m

It was a rather dissapointing start to the week from an activity point of view after the long weekend with value traded amounting to $2.7m as foreigners accounted for 51% of trades. Safcom continued to witness strong foreign demand with the counter closing at a new 12-month high of KES 7.85. It is important to note that we did witness some profit taking towards the end of the sesssion. Likewise, Kenya Commercial Bank also closed at a new 12-month high of KES 44.25. CFC Stanbic put in an impressive performance today, gaining 3.6% after posting an 81.4% increase in FY 2013 PAT. Cavendish Square Holdings, Scangroup’s anchor shareholder (33.62% stake), has proposed to acquire 94,075,974 additional shares in the company effectively raising its stake to 50.10%.

Mauritius: Semdex +0.04%, USD 438k

The Mauritian bourse just couldn’t get going today as just $438k changed hands. Both the Semdex and the Sem-7 gained 4bps and 16bps respectively. In the Sem-7 there were 2 stocks that gained ground, these being NMH (+1.59%, Rs 64) and Alteo Limited (+29bps, Rs34). There were no fallers.

Nigeria: ASI -0.59%, USD 19.7m

The Lagos bourse ticked along at a slow pace for the entire session as the ASI lost 59bps, mostly due to weakness in the banks. The banking sector closed down 1.60% with all names closing in the red, bar Zenith which inched up by 81bps to N21.28. The biggest losers were UBA (-5.1%, N8.00) and Skye Bank (-3.12%, N4.35). As usual, almost all the action took place in the Tier 1 names. Consumers were also under the whip and eventually settled down 32bps for the day. The losers in the sector included NB (-40bps, N174.30) and Guinness (-10bps, N249.79) on big volumes while Dangote Sugar fell by 4.21% on muted volumes. The most active name for the day was the largest cap name on the bourse, namely Dangote Cement which closed unchanged at N194 on big volumes.

Please note that the index figure above is correct at the time of writing.

South Africa: Top 40 +2.03%, USD 1.68bn

The JSE ended the day higher with the Top 40 Index gaining 2.03% to close at 38,072 while value traded amounted to USD 1.68bn. Resources were the day's biggest gainers with the Index gaining 4.98% followed by Industrials and Financials which gained 0.75% and 0.24% respectively. The Rand was trading at 9.83 and 13.07 to the USD and EUR respectively by the time local markets closed.

Zambia: LuSE +0.46%, USD 40k

There was some activity in CEC ($24k) and ZNCO ($11k) on an otherwise dull day in Luska as total value traded amounted to USD 40k.

Zimbabwe: Closed for the day.

African Currencies