African Thoughts: November 24, 2014

Nigeria:

It was a very dull week in Lagos from an activity point of view as turnover fell -54.59% to $81.78m as foreigners were relatively quiet and only involved in block trades. The market closed the week lower with the ASI falling -4.11% which was due to consumer stocks coming under some serious pressure with the sector closing lower by -4.19%. The sector was dragged lower by the likes of Flour Mills (-20.93%), Cadbury (-9.74%), Nestle (-5.02%) and NB (-2.87%). Dangote Cement was also a drag on the market with the heavyweight falling -8.21%. Banking stocks managed to bounce slightly with the Index gaining +0.34%, thanks to GTB (+1.21%), UBA (+0.92%) and Zenith (+0.72%). Oando released Q3 2014 numbers which saw net profit increase 83%.

Kenya:

It was a better week in terms of activity as turnover increased +23.1% to $42.9m with local investors (53.5%) dominating proceedings. It was however good to see that foreigners were once again net buyers as inflows rose 196.5% to $20.3m. The highlight of the week was a large foreign cross in Safcom last Thursday as a total of 110m shares traded in the telco. If media reports are anything to be believed then Safcom will have to cede 30% of its planned 4G capacity to rivals. Equity Bank once again recorded the highest net outflows of $1.6m as foreigners seem to favour Kenya Commercial Bank at the moment. The Energy Regulatory Commission cut fuel prices to the lowest levels since August 2012.

Zimbabwe:

It was a much more active week in Harare as turnover increased +116.44% to $ 13.24m as foreign participation began to return to the market. There were large block trades in ABCH (29%), Delta (17%), Innscor (15%), CBZ (10%) and Econet (8%) which helped boost turnover. On the negative side, the market has now failed to post a weekly gain since the week of September the 5th and closed -2.07% lower last week, taking the YTD loss to -15.65%. Zimstat released trade statistics last week which saw the trade deficit narrow to $2.03bn for the first seven months of 2014.

Mauritius:

The market closed the week lower in Port Louis as the Semdex fell -0.3%, trimming the YTD gain to +0.1%. On the positive side, it was a rather active week as turnover increased to $26m thanks largely to LUX Bonds which accounted for 46.9% of the turnover. There was also some decent activity in MCBG, SBMH and NMH. The two major banking stocks ended mixed with MCBG falling -0.1% while SBMH closed unchanged. Hoteliers were also mixed with NMH falling -0.6%, LUX gained +0.9% while SUN gained +2.2%.