The Closing Bell: Centum And Britam Gain While Total Loses At The NSE
At 3.10 pm today when the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) closed, Centum Investment Company Limited (ICDC) had risen 10.00% from yesterday's KES 60.00 to KES 66.00. British-American Investments - Britam - (BRIT) gained 9.17% from KES 27.25 to KES 29.75. Total Kenya Limited (TOTL) had fallen 17.37% from yesterday's KES 12.95 to KES 10.70.
"The appreciation in Britam and Centum is mostly due to speculation. The buyers are optimistic that the shares will rise to/past their all time high as they recently have. In the case of Britam some market players are now appreciating that the loss of the KES 40 billion Acorn real estate deal to Cytonn Investments will not affect the company's financial performance significantly." Said Silha Rasugu a research analyst at Genghis Capital Limited. He added that Britam's revenues majorly came from its insurance activities with asset management only contributing to 9% of profit. (The Acorn deal would initialy have gone to Britam Asset Management, a subsidiary of Britam).
The share price performance of Britam for the past 3 months is given below. Its daily volume weighted average price had hit an all time high of KES 37.04 on September, 23rd.
Mr Rasugu attributed Total Kenya's decline to profit taking by investors. The counter had experienced a price rally after registering a 27% profit increase in its half year earnings, from KES 461 million to KES 631 million.
Total's share price performance for the past 6 months is given below:
The winners:
The other top gainers were: Car And General Kenya Limited (C&G), Standard Group Limited (SGL) and I & M Holdings Limited (I&M). They closed at KES 61.00, 39.00 and 130.00 respectively.
The losers:
Other companies that shed value were: Express Kenya Limited (XPRS), Kenol Kobil Limited (KENO), Eveready East Africa Limited (EVRD) and Sameer Africa Limited -formerly Firestone- (FIRE). They ended the day at KES 6.75, 9.10, 3.60 and 6.20 respectively.
Most shares traded:
Safaricom Limited (SCOM), Kenya Commercial Bank Limited (KCB), Equity Bank Limited (EQTY), Mumias Sugar Company Limited (MSC) and The Kenya Power & Lighting Company Limited (KPLC). 8.94 million Safaricom shares changed hands today representing 34.50% of all shares traded.
