As we embrace the new month (February), we thought it would be meaningful to analyze foreign investors trading activities (January) in the equities market in order to get a feeling on their level of appetite in the Kenyan Financial Markets.
Foreign Buys
Total foreign buys in all counters stood at KES 8.249Bn. This figure largely consisted of:
- East African Breweries Limited – KES 2.377Bn
- Safaricom Limited – KES 1.428Bn
- Kenya Commercial Bank – KES 1.270Bn
- Equity Group (Bank) – KES 1.190Bn
Foreign Sales
Total foreign sales in all counters stood at KES 7.877Bn. This figure largely consisted of:
- East African Breweries Limited – KES 2.068Bn
- Kenya Commercial Bank – KES 1.491Bn
- Safaricom Limited – KES 1.420Bn
- Equity Group (Bank) – KES 1.154Bn
Excel database download: Foreign Stats.xlsx
Commentary
On balance the Exchange had net foreign buy positions.
Twenty nine counters had net foreign buy positions with East African Breweries Limited leading the pack, EABL announced its half year 2016 results around 28th January. EABL proved resilient and posted a net profit of around KES 7.734Bn. A dividend of KES 2.00 per share was announced which represented a 33% increase compared to the previous year. We attribute this strong performance as to the reason why foreign investors were heavily participating on the counter.
Other notable counters which had net foreign buy positions are: CFC Stanbic Bank, Nation Media Group, Centum Investments Company, British American Tobacco and Kenol Kobil.
Counters which had net foreign sell positions were led by KCB, in fact KCB has been having net foreign sell positions for about three months now. We are still pondering on this data, which leaves as puzzled. Probably the only hypothetical reason we attribute this is by quoting Sunil Sanger, Managing Director of Orion Advisory Services he poses a serious question on the impact of the devaluation of the South Sudan Pound on banks such as Equity Group, KCB and Co-operative Bank of Kenya which have operations in Sudan. Sunil estimates KCB Group may experience forex losses as a result of the devaluation with an estimated figure of KES 5.5 – 6.0Bn.
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