| |
Tuesday 12th of August 2014
|
Morning Africa |
Register and its all Free.
If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox
as your Browser.
0930-1500 KENYA TIME
Normal Board - The Whole shebang
Prompt Board Next day settlement
Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site
http://www.rich.co.ke
Macro Thoughts
Home Thoughts |
| read more |
|
NATO sees 'high probability' of Russian invasion as Ukraine troops close on Donetsk Law & Politics |
Kiev said it was in the "final stages" of recapturing Donetsk, by far
the biggest city under the control of the pro-Russian rebels. The
battle for the city could be a decisive turning point in a conflict
which has caused the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West
since the Cold War.
An industrial metropolis with a pre-war population of nearly 1
million, the main rebel-held redoubt rocked to the crash of shells and
gunfire over the weekend and heavy guns boomed through the night into
Monday from the outskirts of the city.
Ukraine appears to be pressing ahead with its offensive, undeterred by
the presence of what NATO says are some 20,000 Russian troops massed
on the nearby border for a potential ground invasion.
Asked in a Reuters interview how high he rated the chances of Russian
military intervention, Rasmussen said: "There is a high probability."
"We see the Russians developing the narrative and the pretext for such
an operation under the guise of a humanitarian operation and we see a
military buildup that could be used to conduct such illegal military
operations in Ukraine," he said
Conclusions
Eastern Ukraine is now an ''ungoverned space''
|
| read more |
|
AUGUST 11, 2014 A Repugnant New Form of Fascism by FIDEL CASTRO Law & Politics |
“A just idea in the depth of a cave is stronger than an army.”
The human species is living in an unprecedented stage of history. A
crash between military planes or warships which are closely watched,
or other similar events could unleash a conflict with the use of
sophisticated, modern weapons, which could become the last known
adventure of Homo sapiens.
Blaming the Russian Federation for the in-flight destruction of the
Malaysian airplane is a stunning oversimplification. Not Vladímir
Putin, nor Serguéi Lavrov, Russia’s minister of Foreign Relations, or
any other leader of this government would ever come up with such
nonsense.
Twenty-six million Russians died in the defense of their homeland
against the Nazis. Chinese combatants, men and women, inheritors of a
millennial culture, are people of uncommon intelligence and an
invincible spirit of struggle. Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and
most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.
|
| read more |
|
Qatar's Dangerous Game: Switzerland of the Gulf, Patron of Islamists Law & Politics |
Has Qatar overplayed its hand? The emirate, with 300,000 citizens who
enjoy the highest per-capita GDP in the world, has a reputation as the
Switzerland of the Persian Gulf: small, wealthy and dogged about
maintaining good relations with its quarrelsome neighbors. Qatar has
strong ties with Iran, with which it shares a massive offshore gas
field. It also hosts CENTCOM, the U.S. military’s central command in
the Middle East. After the Oslo Accords in 1996, Qatar became the
first Gulf state to establish trade ties with Israel.
Its dexterity is being challenged. Driven by ideology or opportunity —
it isn’t clear which — Qatar’s former emir and his son, who took over
the throne in June 2013, have cast their lot with some of the radical
Islamist groups that have roiled the region since the Arab Spring
revolts broke out in 2010. Qatar’s support for militants has angered
its neighboring conservative monarchies in the Gulf Cooperation
Council — notably Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
But Qatar doesn’t seem to care.
Qatar funds and arms Islamists fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad
and bankrolls Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It let other extremist groups
raise money in Qatar, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Qatar
backed the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt,
before the Egyptian military deposed that nation’s first
democratically-elected leader and declared the Muslim Brotherhood
illegal. And last month, when Qatar tried to broker a ceasefire in
Gaza, the effort was angrily slapped down by Egypt and Israel, who
thought the Qataris were trying to help Hamas win concessions through
violence.
STORY: How Libya Blew Billions and Its Best Chance at Democracy
Why would this peninsula of sand that is smaller than Connecticut,
home to the world’s third-largest natural gas reserves and the 2022
soccer World Cup, climb out on the Islamist limb?
“Above all it boils down to the pragmatic search for autonomy in
policymaking,” says Kristian Coates Ulrichsen of Rice University.
Qatar seeks to “balance ties among competing interests,” he says, to
avoid becoming too entangled with any one. It has always been a haven
for political exiles, including leaders of Hamas and the Muslim
Brotherhood, which has helped keep these groups from stirring up
trouble among Qataris, Ulrichsen adds.
But has it now bitten off more than it can chew?
“Today Qatar is on the defensive. They made a huge gamble and lost
with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt,” says Emile Hokayem, a senior
fellow at the Bahrain center of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies, the London think tank. “Perhaps Islam will shape
the region some day, and the bet will pay off. But in the short and
medium term, the powerful state actors don’t see it that way and are
ready to counter Qatar.”
Petrodollar politics are never simple.
The Article below was written in 2011 before The very sizeable Bet
placed on the Islamists.
|
| read more |
|
15 AUG 11 :: 'Soft Power Qatar and Al-Jazeera' @AJEnglish Law & Politics |
Anyway that’s the backgrounder. What I want to look at is Aljazeera
and how it is a preeminent example of soft power in this 21st century
of ours. Soft power is the ability to obtain what one wants through
co-option and attraction. It can be contrasted with ‘hard power’, that
is the use of coercion and payment. Soft power can be wielded not just
by states, but by all actors in international politics, such as NGOs
or international institutions. The idea of attraction as a form of
power dates back to ancient Chinese philosophers such as Lao Tzu in
the 7th century BC.
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock,
which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft,
and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another
paradox: what is soft is strong.” Lao Tzu.
This idea was further developed by Joseph Nye of Harvard University in
his 2004 book, Soft Power: The means to success in world politics and
I happen to believe that Emir of Qatar is Nye and Lao Tzu’s very best
student.
There are about 250,000 Qataris in a world of about seven billion
souls. That’s considerably less than 0.1 per cent. They tell me
Aljazeera is beamed into more than 200m households.
|
| read more |
|
Sales of Jaguar and Land Rover in China the world’s largest car market, surged 61 percent International Trade |
Profit at the luxury unit more than doubled to 693 million pounds
($1.16 billion) on demand for the F-Type convertible and Range Rover
SUVs. Tata Motors group revenue climbed 38 percent to 646.8 billion
rupees.
Deliveries at Jaguar Land Rover climbed 22 percent to 115,596 vehicles
in the quarter, bolstered by the F-Type that began shipping last year
and the new and refreshed Range Rover line up.
The automaker’s luxury unit is also building a mid-size sports sedan
called the XE, which it will unveil next month and will go on sale in
2015.
The Jaguar XE, to be unveiled in London on Sept. 8, will compete
against Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s 3 series and Daimler AG’s
Mercedes-Benz C Class models. The Jaguar will be the only car in its
segment to be built on an aluminum platform that will help it go 75
miles (120 kilometers) on a gallon of fuel, the company has said.
The XE model will feature four cylinder, 2-liter gasoline and diesel
engines built at the company’s new engine factory, according to the
carmaker.
|
| read more |
|
Barclays Bank reports First Half PAT 2014 +13.424% Earnings here Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 2/-
Closing Price: 17.05
Total Shares Issued: 5431540000.00
Market Capitalization: 92,607,757,000
EPS: 1.4
PE: 12.179
Majority owned by the Barclays group.
Barclays Bank first Half Earnings through June 2014 versus through June 2013
First Half Loans and Advances to Customers [Net] 128.446955b versus
107.050039b +19.987%
First Half Total Assets 213.166988b versus 185.562330b +14.876%
First Half Total Interest Income 11.097427b versus 10.457145b +6.1229%
First Half Total Interest Expenses 1.407108b versus 1.225780b
First Half Net Interest Income 9.690319b versus 9.231365b +4.971%
First Half Total non-interest Income 4.260241b versus 4.491906b -5.157%
First Half total Operating Income 13.950560b versus 13.723271b
First Half Total Operating Expenses 7.838722b versus 7.460262b
First Half Profit before Tax before exceptional items 6.111838b versus
6.263009b -2.4137%
First Half exceptional items 0 versus [0.788259b]
First Half Profit before Tax after exceptional items 6.111838b versus
5.474750b +11.636%
First Half Profit after Tax 4.233294b versus 3.732269b +13.424%
First Half Earnings Per Share 0.78 versus 0.69 +13.043%
No interim Dividend
Company Commentary
Mr Jeremy Awori ''The Banking industry is currently undergoing
unprecedented disruption resultant from a highly dynamic market
environment. We have therefore amplifies our innovations agenda...''
''Additionally we have set up an investment Banking Arm''
Conclusions
Clearly Barclays is now positioning for Growth and that is evidenced
in a 19.987% expansion in Loans and Advances to Customers.
However the 11.636% improvement in Profit before Tax was achieve off
the back of a non-recurrent exceptional Item which cost 0.788259b in
2013.
|
| read more |
|
@BarackObama #AfricaSummit has reset Kenya-US Relationship Kenyan Economy |
Two photographs caught my attention last week. The first was the
photograph of President Kenyatta being received very graciously by
President Obama and The First Lady at the White House and the second
was of the President becoming an honorary Texan, wearing a cowboy hat
and clutching some rather fancy cowboy boots. On a tangential note,
what is remarkable is the ‘New Now’, where so much content is
upstreamed in real time and distributed, curated and amplified before
mainstream media can filter. Its revolutionary and informs us why
Israel has all of a sudden lost control of the narrative. The crowd is
now the narrator and its happening in real time. Essentially the news
is being set ground up whereas once it was being set up from the top
down.
Roland Barthes is well worth reading on photography and wrote:
“One of the marks of our world is perhaps this reversal: we live
according to a generalised image- repertoire. Consider the United
States, where everything is transformed into images: only images exist
and are produced and are consumed...”
The point I am making is that the signalled in the two photographs to
which I referred was necessary and long overdue.
President Kenyatta said, ‘’I want to reassure you concerning a rumour
going round the international public sphere that Kenya and my
government have turned away from the West in favour of the East.”
“Every time Kenya and the US have collaborated on any project, the
world has witnessed spectacular success,” he said.
I for one am pleased that we have reset our relations with the US. The
US remains a key counter- terrorism partner and in this regard we need
all the assistance we can get. Inward remittances from North America
are no less than half a billion dollars a year and seriously material.
As I previously mentioned the US bought $1.32 billion out of $2
billion of our Eurobonds. And most interestingly, I think President
Barack Obama the Commander-in- Chief has heard the demand signal
emanating from the US corporate sector and the Africa Summit might
well mark an inflexion point and the starting gun for a US [eco-
nomic] surge across the continent. It is self evidently in our
national in- terest to surf this predicted surge.
President Uhuru becomes an honorary Texan, wearing a Cowboy Hat and
clutching some Cowboy Boots.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange rallied through Wednesday setting a
fresh all time high before profit taking set in. The NSE20 crossed the
5,000 level for the first time since January 29 last week. The
President spoke of issuing a Samurai Bond [denominated in Yen] and
further reducing the call on the local bond mar- ket to about Sh100
billion. There is a lot of money that
had gotten cosy parking it- self in the local bond market. This money
will have to find
two photographs to which I refer are the signal in the noise and my it
has been noisy! It had been so discordant. We live in a multi-polar
world, where our national interest is served by being globally fluent,
by having as many potential part- ners with whom we can transact. The
resetting of our relationship with the United States that was
a new home.
Mortgage Interest rates continue to trend lower. Single digit interest
rates are no longer a Hail Mary prediction. It’s never going to be a
linear thing but those two photographs inform us that at least things
might be a little less bumpy.
|
| read more |
|
“The US Kenya relationship is a singularly important one from the perspective of our national interest,” Aly Khan Satchu based in Nairobi Standard Kenyan Economy |
“It is the US that bought 66 per cent of our Eurobond and has proven
that it has the capacity and the will to put skin in the game. It is
also an estimated 50 per cent of Inward remittances into Kenya that
come from North America, he noted.
“The US is a key counter terrorism partner and I think our
relationship had become seriously sub optimal. The US Africa Summit
marked the reset of Kenya- USA relations,” said Satchu. “There are
many areas that the US corporate sector has been sending a loud demand
signal to the Commander in Chief. I think we are on the cusp of an
economic surge by the US in Africa,” said Satchu.
He added that the power principle applies in politics hence the need
now to follow through on the Washington event and seriously delete and
expunge some of the unnecessary and seriously provincial language and
behaviour, mentioning that Nairobi has had a really poor etiquette.
|
| read more |
|
EABL traded its 2nd highest volume session of 2014 yesterday 2.125m shares share data FY Earnings here Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 2/-
Closing Price: 299.00
Total Shares Issued: 790774976.00
Market Capitalization: 236,441,717,824
EPS: 8.83
PE: 33.862
Full Year Net Revenue 61.292176b versus 59.061875b [restated] +3.776%
Full Year Profit After Tax 6.858608b versus 6.522200b +5.157%
Full Year Earnings Per share 8.22 versus 8.55 -3.85%
Full Year diluted Earnings Per Share 8.21 versus 8.54 -3.85%
Final Dividend 4.00 shillings a share +1.50 Interim Dividend
Kenya [64% of NSV] 1% decline in NSV
Uganda [18% of NSV] Net Sales Growth +13%
Tanzania [11% of NSV] Net Sales Growth -1.00%
Export Markets [7% of NSV] +50% Net Sales Growth
One of staff reorganisation costs of 1.2b
Tusker Lager +17%
Guinness +20%
We already knew Senator Volumes have cratered
Net Capex of 6.8b
|
| read more |
|
Titus Naikuni to chair RVR board after shakeup Kenyan Economy |
Rift Valley Railways has appointed Mr Titus Naikuni to serve as its
chairman from November as the firm’s new owners reshuffle the
boardroom following share restructuring early in the year.
The retiring Kenya Airways chief executive officer is expected to
bring vast experience to an entity that has struggled to live up to
the terms of its contract with the government.
“To have such a seasoned and transformational business leader chair
the RVR board is a big win for the company,” Mr Ahmed Heikal, chairman
of Qalaa Holdings, formerly Citadel Capital, said in a statement on
Monday.
|
| read more |
|
N.S.E Today |
The Nairobi All Share eased by the least allowable fraction and
retreated 0.01 of a point to close at 154.40.
The Nairobi All Share 1.4489% since setting an all time closing High
Wednesday last week.
The Correction was supremely shallow which is a bullish Signal and I
expect Fresh All Time Highs in short order.
The Nairobi NSE20 has closed above the 5,000 Level for 5 consecutive
sessions [previously closed above 5,000 on 29th January] pushed 7.93
points higher to close at 5023.49.
Equity Turnover thinned out to 362.234m compared to 1.047b in the
previous session.
Barclays Bank reported First Half Earnings Pre Market Opening.
BAT closed at an all time high.
I believe the Equity Market is underpinned by a domestic rate
structure that is headed lower.
$2b of Eurobonds [$1.4b net] + an imminent Samurai Bond + a Sukuk Bond
has inverted the domestic bond market and monies will have to find a
new home on sharply reduced GOK Issuance.
|
|
N.S.E Equities - Agricultural |
Sasini Tea and Coffee rallied +7.59% to close at 16.30 and traded
11,700 shares.
|
|
N.S.E Equities - Commercial & Services |
Safaricom improved 0.392% to close at 12.80 and traded 4.408m shares
worth 56.611m. Safaricom is +17.292% in 2014 and will threaten its all
Time Closing High of 13.15 set April this year.
TPS Serena rallied 3.571% to close at 36.25 and traded 600 shares.
Uchumi rallied 2.38% to close at 12.90 and traded 82,100 shares.
Marshalls EA which is a thinly traded stock traded 600 shares and
closed 8.163% lower at 9.00.
|
|
N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment |
Barclays Bank reported before the Opening Bell that First Half
Profit After Tax 2014 accelerated +13.424% to 4.233294b versus
3.732269b previously. Barclays Bank played a more expansive gain and
expanded First Half Loans and Advances to Customers [Net] First Half
Loans and Advances to Customers [Net] +19.987% to 128.446955b versus
107.050039b. A exceptional Item of 0.788259b did not recur in 2014
and this further juiced the First Half Earnings The MD Jeremy Awori
made some interesting accompanying comments;
''The Banking industry is currently undergoing unprecedented
disruption resultant from a highly dynamic market environment. We have
therefore amplified our innovations agenda...Additionally we have set
up an investment Banking Arm''
Barclays Bank closed unchanged at 17.05 and traded just 188,900
shares. Buyers outpaced Sellers by a Factor of 2 to 1 at the Finish
Line. Barclays Bank has retreated 3.125% in 2014 but the Price is
underpinned between 16.80-17.00.
CFC Stanbic Bank was the most actively traded counter at the
Securities Exchange and eased 0.78% to close at 128.00 and traded
527,200 shares. CFC Stanbic has rallied +47.126% Year to data but
nevertheless remains cheap versus its peers trading on a Trailing PE
of 9.868 and after accelerating 1st Half Profit after Tax +52.435%.
CFC StanBic has also announced that it will convert its Juba Branch
[South Sudan is responsible for 10% of the Bank's revenues] into a
subsidiary.
Kenya Commercial Bank firmed 0.93% to close at 54.00 and traded 1.015m
shares. Kenya Commercial Bank posted a Record Closing High of 59.00 on
5th August before correcting 9.322% 5th August through this morning.
The Share Price has based out again and the correction [within 10%] a
near perfect chart correction in a Bull Trend. Kenya Commercial Bank
is +14.285% in 2014.
COOP Bank closed unchanged at 19.00 and traded 1.151m shares ahead of
its First half Earnings Release which is expected as early as tomorrow
pre-opening.
Equity Bank retreated 1.64% to close at 45.00 and traded 396,600
shares. Equity Bank is +46.31% in 2014 but Buyers are a little
exhausted after what has been a blistering rally in 2014.
National Bank rallied 8.1818% to close at 29.75 and traded 98,400 shares.
NIC Bank closed unchanged at 61.50 but was trading at 63.00 +2.44%
session highs at the closing Bell. NIC Bank traded 323,000 shares.
Pan Africa Insurance which had been on a losing streak since releasing
its 1st Half 2014 Earnings. Pan Africa had retreated 8.59% since
releasing its First Half Earnings where H1 Profit After Tax
decelerated -51.16% to 390.794m and the Company had said in its
commentary accompanying the results that the Profit before Tax decline
was attributable to ''significant unrealised gains on equity
investments recognised in investment return on shareholders' assets in
the comparable 2013 period.'' The Sanlam Group has a majority stake.
Today, evidently some felt the 8.59% retreat had become overcooked and
rallied the price +5.982% to close at 124.00. Pan Africa Insurance is
+37.777% in 2014.
|
|
N.S.E Equities - Industrial & Allied |
BAT firmed 0.14% to close at 700.00 which is an all time closing High.
|
|
|
|
|
