African Thoughts: June 20, 2015

Nigeria:

It was a short week in Lagos last week due to the Eid celebrations. Please note that today is also a holiday. The market continues to wander along aimlessly and as such the ASI (-2.15%) just seems to drift lower. There were some chunky crosses in names like Zenith and Wapco during the week. The NSE Banking index lost 1.45% triggered by losses in the likes of Access Bank (N5.03, -1.18%), GT Bank (N26.00, -0.42%) and Zenith Bank (N17.72, -6.49%). The Consumers fell by 4.19% during the week with losses in the likes of Honeywell Flour Mills (N2.80, -13.31%) and Dangote Flour (N3.05, -10.29%). We also saw the beginning of H1 results releases with results coming out in Cadbury, NB and Transcorp.

Kenya:

The NASI and NSE 20 fell by 2.2% and 1.9% respectively last week. Year to date they are now down 4.3% (NASI) and 9.3% (NSE 20). Market turnover was also slightly reduced yet still remains fairly active with foreigners heavily involved especially in the large caps. The banks were particularly active with Equity Bank gaining 60bps to KES45.00 while KNCB fell by 90bps to KES54.50. There has been some notable selling in Safcom (-5.3%, KES15.15) although the telco did try and stabilize towards the end of the week. EABL has also shown signs of stability after its recent weakness and gained 1.8% to KES285. There has been a lot of local crossing in Centum (-9.7%, KES56.00) in recent sessions.

Zimbabwe:

The ZSE really is battling to limp along although on a positive note it seems like most investors have managed to get on top of the newly automated system. The Industrials fell by a further 95bps last week (YTD -11.86%) as volumes remain subdued. Somewhat unbelievably, Econet continues to fall and is now trading at 33.17c (-5.23% for the week) while Delta closed at 96.75c (-1.28%) as the brewer announced its Q1 trading update. Innscor was also soft (-75bps, 60.79c) while retailer OKZim fell by 6.25% to 7.5c.

Mauritius:

In keeping with the generally dull SSA markets the Port Louis market also remains underwhelming. To perfectly illustrate this both the Semdex (-50bps) and the Sem-10 (-30bps) drifted aimlessly lower.