African Thoughts: September 29, 2014

Nigeria:

It was a much better week in terms of activity as turnover increased +65.01% to $164.24m. This should however be taken with a pinch of salt as trade was dominated by a few chunky crosses in the likes of DangCem, Seplat, NB and GTB. The market came under pressure with the ASI falling -0.56% as banks fell under the sword with the Banking Index losing -2.00%. There was some selling pressure in the likes of Access (-7.19%), ETI (-4.42%), UBA (-3.88%) and Zenith (-2.64%). Consumers (+0.07%) on the other managed to close slightly higher thanks to good performances in Guinness (+8.57%) and Nestle (+0.48%). Oando released H1 2014 results which saw PAT increase +110%. Transcorp Hotels Plc opened an initial public offering on the Nigerian Stock Exchange on September 2014, in which they have offered 800,000,000 ordinary shares.

Kenya:

The market came under pressure last week in Nairobi with the NSE 20 Index falling -1.7% on the back of local selling. On the positive side, turnover increased +11.6% to $65.4m on the back of local participation. Equity Bank (-6.1%) came under some serious pressure after the Communications Authority asked the bank to commit to compensate the regulator for any liabilities that may occur on account of its embedded SIM card. Safcom (+0.8%) managed to close in positive territory after the company has sought to revise obligations to MPesa users who choose to use the banks embedded SIM cards which it considers insecure. BAT set a new all-time high of KES 890. EABL managed to bounce after some selling over the last few weeks with the brewer gaining +1.1%.

Zimbabwe:

The market closed the week lower in Harare with the Industrial Index falling -0.8% on the back of losses in the smaller cap stocks. It was also a rather quiet week from an activity point of view with turnover falling -35.16% to $7.97m as foreign participation as all but absent. Market Heavyweights NatFoods (36%), Econet (22%) and Innscor (14%) contributed the most towards turnover.

Mauritius:

It was a very strong week in Port Louis as the Sem-7 managed to gain a very solid 2% thanks to strong moves in MCBG (+1.1%) and SBM (+1.9%). Activity was a bit on the dull side as turnover amounted to $7.1m with MCBG and SBM accounting for 49% of total value traded. Hoteliers had a fairly good week with NMH gaining +0.9% while LUX gained +6.3%.