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Tuesday 13th of August 2019 |
The Feedback Loop Phenomenon Africa |
Last Monday I wrote
''The most important currency to watch right now is the USDCNH [and] It could slice through 7.00 like a hot knife through Butter.
The Offshore USDCNH market popped through 7 on Monday [sending a shiver through Global markets - The Markets emit signals and the Signal the market was emitting was that there was a precise correlation coefficient between a weaker Yuan and weaker S&P 500 Futures] and closed on Friday at 7.0985. On Thursday, China set its yuan fixing [onshore] weaker than 7 for the first time since 2008.
President Trump finally pulled the Trigger on citing China as a currency Manipulator.
''We're in that bizarro world where you can be a currency manipulator if you fail to manipulate your currency'' tweeted @TonyFratto
It is clear that the Chinese have been keeping the Renminbi [Yuan] artificially high.
George Magnus writing in Bloomberg's Quint
China allowing the yuan to slide below 7 to the dollar is a watershed moment for currency markets that's symbolically equivalent to the U.S. and other countries abandoning the gold standard in the interwar period, or the collapse of the postwar Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates four decades ago. The implications for the global economy are equally significant. The world’s major currencies aren’t tethered in the way they were in those periods, but gold and Bretton Woods both served as anchors for the world’s monetary system, and their demise reflected the economic and political disarray of their times. Today, the yuan is semi-pegged to the U.S. dollar. The arrangement serves as an anchor for China’s financial system, now the world’s largest by assets; for many currency systems in Asia and around the world; and for U.S.-China economic and financial relations. If that mainstay ruptures, it’s liable to set off chain reactions inside and outside China. That’s why the loosening in currency policy by the People’s Bank of China this week, while it may seem unremarkable for most people, is an important development.
Late last Year, the View was
“This is all on Xi’s shoulders,” said Trey McArver, co-founder of Beijing-based research firm Trivium China. “Xi has personally said that he would handle relations with the United States and at this point, he has failed. Those relations are spiraling out of control.” [Bloomberg]
What is clear is that Xi Jinping has repelled the US Advance and this past week's Yuan Price Action was a message delivered with finesse and subtlety and whose import cannot be ignored.
Given that neither President Trump nor Xi Jinping have it seems any desire to back up, the risks are skewed as follows. We should expect more volatility in the Feedback Loop that was characterised by Bloomberg Businessweek thus
The chaos cycle -Powell speaks -Trump tweets -China reacts -Markets freak
The Point is this the Yuan is now the Catalyst and China has signalled it will be a shock absorber. Xi Jinping was also signalling he had control of the Console. The direction of Travel for the Chinese currency is therefore lower. The Yen and the Swiss franc considered safe havens in troubled times have been in demand and Sterling was described as ''drinking at the last chance saloon'' and closed on Friday with its its nose just in front of 1.2000. Gold [safe haven] crossed $1,500.00 for the first time since April 2013. G7 Sovereign Bonds tilted further and deeper into negative Territory. So this Bid for Safe-haven assets has intensified and a weaker Yuan will only intensify this impulse as it courses through the veins of the Foreign Exchange markets. China has exerted the Power of Pull over a vast swathe of the World over the last two decades. We can call it the the China, Asia, EM and Frontier markets Feedback loop. This Feedback Loop has been largely a positive one for the last two decades. With the Yuan now in retreat [and in a precise response to Trump], this will surely exert serious downside pressure on those countries in the Feedback Loop.
To wit, Emerging market stocks closed down for 11 days running , 12 being an all-time record which was narrowly missed. The Purest Proxy for the China, Asia, EM and Frontier markets Feedback loop Phenomenon is the South African Rand aka the ZAR. The rand was down 0.4% to 15.1121 per dollar by 12:05 p.m. in Johannesburg, its weakest level on a closing basis since Sept. 2018. The rand is also the most volatile currency in the world, with the one-week implied volatility climbing a fourth day. The Rand is at risk of a further asymmetric downside move.
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Buddhism was born under a giant fig tree, which, today, grows at the center of the town of Bodh Gaya, in India's Bihar. The tree is about three crooked blocks from the Be Happy Cafe @NewYorker @PaulSalopek Africa |
Buddhism was born under a giant fig tree, which, today, grows at the center of the remote and unbeautiful town of Bodh Gaya, in India’s destitute northeastern state of Bihar. The tree is about three crooked blocks from the Be Happy Café and a few minutes’ walk from a used book store where a middle-aged Krishna devotee from Iowa, named James, works, reselling old paperbacks by Hesse and Murakami. The sacred Bodhi Tree is surrounded by a wall and guarded by police.
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Ah! Sun-flower BY WILLIAM BLAKE Africa |
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun: Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done.
Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
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Sunflower Sutra BY ALLEN GINSBERG Africa |
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry. Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery. The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily. Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust— —I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—Harlem and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past— and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye— corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb, leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear, Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then! The grime was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives, all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis’ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt—industrial—modern—all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown— and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos—all these entangled in your mummied roots—and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form! A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze! How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul? Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive? You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower! And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not! So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter, and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen, —We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.
Berkeley, 1955
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Hong Kong airport cancels all flights as protesters flood terminal @financialtimes Law & Politics |
Hong Kong airport cancelled all remaining flights on Monday afternoon after thousands of protesters flooded the main terminal of the international aviation hub in the worst blow to the territory’s economy since anti-government protests began more two months ago. The move, in which protesters chanted slogans and criticised police for violence during rallies on Sunday, came as authorities in Beijing said the demonstrators had begun displaying “early signs of terrorism”. The anti-government protests, sparked by a proposed bill that would allow extradition of suspects to mainland China for the first time, have plunged Hong Kong into its worst political crisis since the UK handed the former colony over to China in 1997. Protesters turned up in force at the airport on Monday after police fired tear gas into two subway stations and fired non-lethal rounds directly at civilians from short range on Sunday night following clashes with demonstrators. Hong Kong International Airport said in a statement on Monday afternoon that check-in services for all flights had been suspended and all other flights had been cancelled for the rest of the day.
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"Shapeshifting" an excerpt from HyperNormalization by Adam Curtis Law & Politics |
The Political Technologists Vladislav Surkov In his spare time Surkov writes essays on conceptual art and lyrics for rock groups. He’s an aficionado of gangsta rap: there’s a picture of Tupac on his desk, next to the picture of Putin Putin’s chief ideologue and grey cardinal, Vladislav Surkov, the ‘Kremlin demiurge’. Known also as the ‘puppetmaster who privatised the Russian political system’, Surkov is the real genius of the Putin era. Surkov is the real genius of the Putin era. Understand him and you understand not only contemporary Russia but a new type of power politics, a breed of authoritarianism far subtler than the 20th-century strains.
''a ceaseless shapeshifting which is unstoppable because its undefinable''
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"My portfolio at the @KremlinRussia_E and in government has included ideology, media, political parties, religion, modernization, innovation, foreign relations, and ..." - here he pauses and smiles - "modern art." @TheAtlantic Law & Politics |
They repeat the great mantras of the era: The president is the president of “stability,” the antithesis to the era of “confusion and twilight” in the 1990s. “Stability”—the word is repeated again and again in a myriad seemingly irrelevant contexts until it echoes and tolls like a great bell and seems to mean everything good; anyone who opposes the president is an enemy of the great God of “stability.” “Effective manager,” a term quarried from Western corporate speak, is transmuted into a term to venerate the president as the most “effective manager” of all. “Effective” becomes the raison d’être for everything: Stalin was an “effective manager” who had to make sacrifices for the sake of being “effective.” The words trickle into the streets: “Our relationship is not effective” lovers tell each other when they break up. “Effective,” “stability”: No one can quite define what they actually mean, and as the city transforms and surges, everyone senses things are the very opposite of stable, and certainly nothing is “effective,” but the way Surkov and his puppets use them the words have taken on a life of their own and act like falling axes over anyone who is in any way disloyal.
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In an editorial for the London Review of Books quoted by Curtis, Peter Pomerantsev describes Putin's Russia thus: Law & Politics |
In contemporary Russia, unlike the old USSR or present-day North Korea, the stage is constantly changing: the country is a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime, while, backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away. Surkov is at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next. It's a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it's indefinable. — Peter Pomerantsev, in "Putin's Rasputin", London Review of Books issue of 20 October 2011[8]
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Peter Navarro says US will take strong action against China if it devalues yuan to 'neutralize tariffs' @CNBC Law & Politics |
“Clearly, they are manipulating their currency from a trade point of view,” Navarro told CNBC’s “Closing Bell ” on Friday. “They’re going to, and we’re going to take strong action against them.” Earlier this week, China allowed its currency to drop against the dollar to a key level unseen since 2008. The Trump administration later labeled Beijing a “currency manipulator. ” Navarro said China was taking actions to deal with the effects of tariffs. “China has devalued its currency by over 10% with the express purpose of neutralizing tariffs, full stop,” Navarro said. Last week, President Donald Trump abruptly ended a cease-fire with China by announcing 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, claiming China failed to buy U.S. farm goods as it promised. The trade war continued to boil over this week as China announced it would stop buying American agricultural products in retaliation for Trump’s surprise tariffs threat. Navarro said that every American farmer will be “made whole” and “will not be hurt by China.” He also insisted that China, not U.S. consumers, will suffer financially because of tariffs. “China will bear virtually the entire burden of that through the currency manipulation and by slashing prices,” he said. “China is the one that suffers far more harm than what might be inflicted on us.” Over the next couple of months, Navarro said White House officials plan to have Chinese negotiators back to the U.S. for trade talks.
International Markets
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05-FEB-2018 :: [The End of] Halcyon Days @TheStarKenya Emerging Markets |
Wikipedia has an article on: halcyon days and it reads thus,
From Latin Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the “halcyon days,” when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successfuL
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HARARE, Zimbabwe - Everywhere he looked, President Emmerson D. Mnangagwa could see his own face. Africa |
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Everywhere he looked, President Emmerson D. Mnangagwa could see his own face. To battle his cold, he sipped a hot drink from a mug adorned with his own head shot. To his left, an aide wore a green shirt covered with the same image. To his right was a large photograph of the president as a young man. His state portrait hung from the opposite wall. Since seizing power in a 2017 coup from his onetime mentor, Robert G. Mugabe, Mr. Mnangagwa has gradually imposed himself on Zimbabwe — here in Mr. Mugabe’s former offices in downtown Harare, as well as on the country at large. Though the new president is marketed as a clean break from Mr. Mugabe and 37 years of autocratic rule and economic mismanagement, Mr. Mnangagwa’s opponents now fear he is more dangerous than his predecessor. The number of government critics charged with “subverting a constitutional government,” a form of treason, during Mr. Mnangagwa’s 21 months at the helm already outstrips the figure during Mr. Mugabe’s 37 years in office, according to a coalition of 22 Zimbabwean rights watchdogs. In between coughs and sneezes, Mr. Mnangagwa dismissed criticism of his human rights record and highlighted his reforms. “In every society, oppositions will make accusations,” he said in a rare interview. “You need to deal with facts.” Mr. Mnangagwa has already removed some constraints on foreign investors and white farmers who lost land under Mr. Mugabe. He has pledged to replace Mugabe-era legislation that obstructs press freedom and the right to protest and to set up an international inquiry into abuses by his own security forces. “We are now in a serious movement of economic reforms and political reforms,” Mr. Mnangagwa said. But the difficulty for Mr. Mnangagwa is that many Zimbabweans see little new about the 77-year-old’s presidency. Before he turned on Mr. Mugabe, Mr. Mnangagwa was the former leader’s longtime enforcer and later his deputy. A guerrilla fighter during the liberation struggle against white rule, Mr. Mnangagwa accompanied his predecessor to the negotiations that led to the creation of Zimbabwe in 1980. He later served as minister for state security, overseeing the domestic intelligence service before becoming justice minister, defense minister and finally vice president. He helped carry out much of the legislation that he now promises to rescind. And while Mr. Mnangagwa tends to turn to the military to keep the population in check, in a departure from Mr. Mugabe’s reliance on the police and informal militias, his critics say the result is the same: a repressive government that has a dangerously low tolerance for dissent. “The current regime is worse than Robert Mugabe on all fronts,” said Obert Masaraure, the head of a teachers’ union who said he had twice been abducted and tortured by military officers since the start of the year, before being handed over both times to the police. “Under Robert Mugabe, I was never abducted for engaging in trade unionism,” Mr. Masaraure added. “Under Robert Mugabe, I was never thrown in a maximum-security prison for 16 days.” Mr. Mnangagwa and his party won presidential and parliamentary elections last July. But an international election monitoring team, jointly led by the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, two American democracy watchdogs, found that the polls were not free and fair. According to the team’s report, Mr. Mnangagwa’s party may have allocated food aid and agricultural supplies in exchange for political support in the run-up to the elections. Mr. Mnangagwa defended the election, which he noted was peaceful, and insisted there was no bribery during his campaign. “We don’t give to a person because he is a particular cadre of a particular party,” he said. “A person is given support because that family or household is in need of food.” Traditional leaders, who are bound by the Constitution to remain politically independent, corralled their villagers into voting for Mr. Mnangagwa, the election monitoring team’s report said. It also said there were irregularities in the tabulation of the final vote. “The elections failed to make the mark,” said Johnnie Carson, a former United States assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who led the delegation of election monitors. “All of these things weigh in and create an environment that can shape the outcome of an election long before an election day.” The election was also immediately followed by the killing of six protesters during a military crackdown on demonstrations against suspected polling irregularities. In January, the military was again deployed to dispel protests against a fuel price hike. During the days that followed, 17 people were killed, 16 raped, 26 abducted and more than 900 arrested, according to the coalition of Zimbabwean rights watchdogs. “We see him as a very insecure president,” said Roselyn Hanzi, executive director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. “He’s paranoid.” Mr. Mnangagwa sat in his office recently for an interview next to a shelf stocked with books by Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. China is a major stakeholder in the Zimbabwean economy. And the 2017 coup led by Zimbabwe’s army chief at the time, Constantino Chiwenga, and Mr. Mnangagwa came days after Mr. Chiwenga returned from a visit to China where he met his Chinese counterpart and the Chinese defense minister. The president also presents himself as a corruption fighter. His tourism minister had been arrested that week on graft charges, the first senior casualty of a new anticorruption commission that Mr. Mnangagwa founded in July. He said the military was deployed in August and in January only because the police were overwhelmed by the scale of the disturbances, presenting his approach as the only sane response. “My brother, I don’t know what you would have done,” he said. “We have to protect and bring law and order in the country.” Mr. Mnangagwa has been traveling extensively throughout Africa, promoting and developing plans for economic reform. He wants to be seen as a modernizer, and he portrays Zimbabwe as once again “open for business.” He opened a dry port for Zimbabwean trade in Namibia. He has reduced the paperwork needed to open companies, and he loudly seeks foreign investment in the mining, tourism, agricultural and textile industries. He is also calling on the United States to end a raft of American sanctions that President Trump recently extended for another year. Though most of the measures are targeted only at particular individuals, such as Mr. Mnangagwa, and at certain government-owned firms, they are a potential obstacle to loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Zimbabwe exported goods worth more than $75 million to the United States in 2018, making the United States one of its largest trading partners. The American government says it is the largest donor of aid to the country. Zimbabwe is suffering from vast shortages of fuel, bank notes, water and electricity. Drivers typically wait three hours for gasoline, and civil servants line up all morning to receive part of their salaries in cash. Half of the capital Harare receives running water only once a week, and electricity blackouts last up to 18 hours a day in many areas. An inflation rate of more than 175 percent has put some food and medicine beyond the reach of middle-class Zimbabweans. Shoppers emerging from a Harare supermarket complained of a sevenfold rise in the price of bread since this time last year. “We can’t afford to buy groceries,” said Jonathan Tiripano, a 46-year-old window-frame manufacturer who said he had gone without breakfast. His family had stopped buying meat, bread and milk and was surviving mostly on vegetables and ground maize, he added. “We can’t cope.” People are suffering, Mr. Mnangagwa acknowledged, but he said he expected that with time, the situation would ease. “The economy is going to be fixed through a process,” he said. “These things cannot be done overnight.” Mr. Mnangagwa acknowledged that sanctions were only one cause of Zimbabwe’s escalating economic crisis. It has been exacerbated by decades of corruption, mismanagement and a recent austerity program enforced by Mr. Mnangagwa’s finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, a former economist at the University of Cambridge. The austerity program has created Zimbabwe’s first budget surplus in years, which would allow the government to pay off some of its debts, which might in turn unlock more international loans. An electricity deal was being signed with a South African energy supplier, and he was negotiating with China to finance the renovation of the Zimbabwean water system. “I have said always we should not bury our heads in sand and say, Ah, because America has put sanctions on us, the E.U. has put sanctions on us, so we’re going to cry. No. We are saying: With the resources that we have, let us apply ourselves using our resources and resuscitate our economy. And this is what we’re doing.” But outside his office, in the serpentine lines that define today’s Harare, few believed him. ''Mugabe was better than this guy,” said Patrick Muza, a 33-year-old minibus driver who had been standing in line for two hours for fuel, and still had at least an hour to go. The most recent price hike had raised the cost of gas by another 15 percent, making his business increasingly unprofitable. “During the coup, we were happy,” Mr. Muza said. “But we didn’t realize what was to come.”
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Rwanda Upgraded To 'B+' On Strong Economic Prospects; Outlook Stable Africa |
Overview Rwanda's economic growth prospects are stronger than peers', in our view, supported by robust investment levels of about 25% of GDP. Despite planned fiscal expansion, we expect government debt levels will remain moderate and debt-servicing costs will remain relatively low. We are therefore raising our long-term sovereign credit rating on Rwanda to 'B+' from 'B', and assigning a stable outlook.
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TPS Serena Hotels reports HY 2019 Earnings here Africa |
Par Value: 1/- Closing Price: 19.00 Total Shares Issued: 182174108.00 Market Capitalization: 3,461,308,052 EPS: 0.69 PE: 27.536
TPS manages 15 hotels and resorts across East Africa under the Serena brand name.
HY Revenues 2.704836b vs. 2.684910b +0.742% HY Profit before exchange difference, interest, depreciation, results of associates and taxation 124.170m vs. 0.833m +14,806.363% HY Exchange profit/ [loss] on foreign currency loans [18.358m] vs. 25.125m -173.067% HY Net interest cost [84.905m] vs. [61.385m] +38.316% HY Depreciation, on property, plant and equipment [233.976m] vs. [194.763m] +20.134% HY Loss before income tax [215.312m] vs. [231.413m] -6.958% HY Loss after taxation [160.687m] vs. [168.610m] +4.699% Loss per share [0.97] vs. [1.12] +13.393% Cash and cash equivalents at end of period [346.668m] vs. [239.306m] -44.864%
Company Commentary
During the first half of the year 2019, market sentiment has continued to indicate a consistent return of confidence from the foreign leisure market segment to Kenya; and in deed across the wider East African region. The Company's (TPS Eastern Africa PLC/the Group) diversified portfolio in East Africa recorded growth in the corporate and domestic leisure segments, particularly during the second quarter of 2019, once insecurity issues in Kenya receded. Given the seasonal nature of the tourism industry in East Africa, financial performance for the first half of 2019 should not be taken as a basis for extrapolating a full year's forecast. For the six-months to 30 June 2019, TPS Eastern Africa PLC recorded a 'Profit before exchange difference, interest, depreciation, results of associates and taxation' of KShs. 124.2 million; as compared to KShs. 0.8 million for the same period last year. For the period under review, the Group continued to effectively manage its business strategy, including controlling operating costs in increasingly challenging markets. Foreign exchange loans coupled with adverse foreign exchange rates, resulted in exchange losses on debt, as well as relatively higher net interest charges, over the same period last year. Depreciation increased due to the capitalisation of phase one of the Nairobi Serena redevelopment project. The final phase of the redevelopment of Nairobi Serena Hotel (NSH) is substantially completed and expected to deliver once again incremental revenue going forward. In line with the Board's vision to reposition the Serena City Hotels brand, NSH's progress to full completion by Q4 2019 bodes well for future market share growth, similar to the encouraging strategic business developments achieved through 2017 at the refurbished Kampala Serena Hotel and the Dar es Salaam Serena Hotel. The Group will continue to successfully progress the planned refurbishment of its property portfolio, maintain appropriate Human Resource Management practices and promote sound Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs that complement its long-term business strategy. Serena Hotels CSR programs remain fully aligned to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out by the United Nations Development Programme. Indeed, our sustainable business practices continue not only to complement, but indeed to enhance eco-tourism, environmental conservation, reafforestation, education, public health; and essentially community development across Eastern Africa. Important feedback from our suppliers of business in traditional and new international source markets, has been encouraging with increasing interest in selling destination East Africa. This backdrop will provide the impetus to optimize portfolio performance in 2019 to the extent possible. Consequently, current forecasts indicate a satisfactory outlook during the second half of 2019 for Serena Kenya, Serena Tanzania and Serena Uganda. The Board and Management express their appreciation to the governments of the East African Region for facilitating the continuous resource allocation required to improve the business environment for destination East Africa. In line with the Company's policy, the Board of Directors does not recommend the declaration of an interim dividend.
Conclusions
They always exhibit an H2 Skew. Nairobi Serena should bounce H2 and earnings going forward. Its a valuable but undervalued Franchise.
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The Serena The Star Africa |
MY memories of the Serena start in Mombasa years back when the managing director Mahmoud Jan Mohamed was the manager. I was then a teenager and remember losing my heart to a girl, who would beat me at table tennis, in a bikini. That table tennis Table is still there. The Serena brand has always been sprinkled with a fairy dust and reminds me of happy joyful carefree halcyon days of youth. That brand equity was appreciated last Thursday at the Grosvenor House where The Serena Hotels won the Best Hospitality, Travel and Tourism in Africa award at the African Business Awards.
And now, Serena is clearly staking out a much more forward and offensive position across the region and as you know by now, I sense the Eastern sea board of Africa is at a tipping Point [The oil and gas refers but just as important is the late cycle arrival of the information century which is the entry ticket for Africa to join in the c21st That Arrival of the Information Century is very grass roots because anyone with an Internet enabled mobile phone has an entry ticket and therefore, I see the expansion of the brand as timely and riding a rising tide. The brand is established. Its got breadth, its not a mom and pop operation. Sure, lots of folks are coming for Serena lunch but their longevity, their ability to navigate has been proven and their DNA make them a formidable competitor.
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