African Thoughts: June 27, 2015

Nigeria:

It was a slightly better week in terms of activity, but still nothing to write home about as turnover increased to $118m (+15.87%) thanks mostly to a large book over done in Zenith on Tuesday (ca. $65m). There was also a small bit of activity (mostly block trading) in GTB and Nestle. Banking stocks came under some pressure with the sector falling -1.65% thanks to ETI (-10.00%) and Unity Bank (-6.56%). Consumers (+0.42%) managed to close in positive territory with good performances in 7UP (+7.18%), Dangote Sugar (+5.08%) and Dangote Flour (4.92%). There were a few companies releasing results last week with the likes of Flour Mills (FY-15), FBNH (H1-15) and Diamond Bank (H1-15) all releasing numbers. The Monetary Policy Committee held the benchmark rate at 13% last week.

Kenya:

The market came under some serious pressure, albeit on low volumes, as the NSE 20 Index fell -3.0% on local selling while foreigners were net buyers. The likes of Carbacid (-17.4%), Uchumi (-16.1%) and Britam (-15.1%) were major drags on the market. Another negative was the drop in activity as turnover fell -53.5% to $28.6m with foreigners (70.6%) dominated proceedings. Safcom ($1.5m) saw the largest net foreign inflows as foreigners looked to take advantage of the recent fall. EABL managed to gain +1.8% ahead of FY 2015 results which are due out on the 31st of July 2015. KNCB will be releasing H1 2015 results on the 30th of July 2015.

Zimbabwe:

Another rather dull week in Harare from an activity point of view as turnover fell -31.56% to $3.47m as Econet was the biggest contributor towards value traded (35%) while there was also a small bit of activity in Delta, BAT and Innscor. The market managed to close the week in positive territory as the Industrial Index gained +1.68%, despite Delta's disappointing Q1 trading update. There were good performances in market heavyweights Seedco (+3.60%), Delta (+3.36%), Econet (+2.50%) and innscor (+2.02%).

Mauritius:

The market closed slightly higher with the Semdex gaining +0.2%, trimming the YTD loss to -5.8%. It was a relatively slow week from an activity point of view as turnover amounted to $6.8m as most of the activity was centered on MCBG, LUX and SBM which together accounted for 69% of total value traded for the week. The two major banks managed to close the week higher as MCBG gained +3.0% while SBMH gained +1.1%. The hotel sector had a rather rough time last week as NMH fell -4.4%, SUN shed -2.6% while LUX closed unchanged.