African Thoughts: March 13, 2017

Nigeria:

Another quiet week in Nigeria as the index still battles to find any specific catalyst to give it any direction. The ASI closed up 90bps with Banks up 10bps while Consumers rose by a more impressive 5.15%. The main reason why consumers did so well was the 16.95% rise in Nestle to N734.99 while Unilever (+11.45%, N32.30) also witnessed a late rally. Nestle released results out late last week. During the week we saw Access Bank and GTB release results while Zenith will go ex-div on Monday 13 March for a dividend of N1.77 per share.

Kenya:

It was a very dull week in Kenya with Safcom accounting for the lion’s share of activity. The telco continued to come under pressure at the start of the week, down by as much as -4.14% at KES 16.20, with investors concerned about the government’s latest comments about MPESA, but eventually closed the week unchanged at KES 16.90. KNCB released FY 2016 results on Thursday with the group seeing a 10% increase in PBT to KES 29.1bn with the market seemingly pleasantly surprised with the numbers as the counter closed the week +15.69% higher at KES 29.50. Total value traded for the week amounted to $12.54m while the NSE 20 Index closed +0.04% higher.

Zimbabwe:

Much of the same in Zimbabwe last week, although we did see some action in both the local and foreign Econet Rights over the course of the week, with 28.9m local rights trading on Thursday. Total value traded amounted to a sub-par $3.45m. The market managed to close the week in positive territory with the Industrial Index gaining +0.68% thanks to Delta (+1.69%) and Econet (+0.84%).

Mauritius:

The Semdex gained 2bps (YTD +6.05%) while the Sem-10 also gained 2bps to be up 6.68% YTD. Turnover remains heavily geared towards the banking groups – MCBG gained 10bps to Rs226.50 while SBMH closed unchanged at Rs7.02. IBL closed the week at an all-time high of Rs36.60. Tourist arrival numbers were released for January and February which showed a 4.7% increase over the same period in 2016.

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