Movers & Shakers: December 28, 2012

Kenya: NSE 20 -0.01%, USD 1.4m

With many participants in Nairobi either away or preferring to watch from the sidelines it was no surprise that the day was extremely quiet. Foreign activity was also low, accounting for 68% of the buys and hardly any sells. KCB was by far the most active name and accounted for 36% of the days turnover, the name closing unchanged at KES29.75. Equity Bank is still favoured by foreign buying and closed up 1.05% at KES24. KPLL and EABL were driven by foreign buying, KPLL closing up 2.05% at KES17.45 while EABL closed +76bps at KES265.

Nigeria: ASI +0.46%, USD 12.54m

As expected, a painfully dull day in Lagos for the penultimate session for 2012. Banks were yet again strong (+1.24%) mostly pulled higher yet again by GTB (+3.51%, N23.00) while FCMB (+4.55%, N3.45) and Diamond Bank (+2.06%, N4.95) were also strong. There was a flurry of activity in the consumers late in the session with volumes in Nestle, NB and Guinness ramping up in the second half of the session. Nestle and NB closed unchanged at N700 and N145 respectively while Guinness closed up 2.63% at N272.12.

Zimbabwe: Ind +2.10%, Mining unch, USD2.59m

ZSE Industrials rallied ahead of the year end gaining an impressive 2.10% on a gainers only day. Turnover saw a marked 93.3% surge to $2.6m with the market favorite emerging to be telecoms giant Econet where 412,855 units exchanged hands at a stable price of 450c yielding $1.9m in value; a whopping 72% of the value traded in the session. Foreign participation on both the sell and purchases side more than doubled to $1.8m and $1.0m respectively. Out of the thirty one active stocks for the day seventeen saw gains with no losers on the board. Despite there being other better gainers percentage wise; beverages group Delta was the pick of the day after setting a second all-time high in as many sessions settling at a psychological $1.00 mark having added 2.91c. Other stocks to rise with notable impact on overall market performance included OKZIM +3.45% to 15c, Hippo +0.91% to 111c, SeedCo +1.17% to 77c and Old mutual +0.66% to 152c. Top performers for the day was agro based group Ariston that gained 30% to 1.3c with short term insurers Nicoz Diamond following after a 20% rise took them to 1.2c. Bankers NMBZ were 16.1% higher at 0.65c while TA and RTG completed the risers list after adding 11.1% and 10.0% to 10c and 2.2c respectively. The mining index remained flat at 64.30pts as there were no trades in the mining stocks while quotes remained unchanged were unchanged save for Bindura where the bid was lowered to 1.4c.