Oil marketer upstages Safaricom as biggest day mover

Kenya's oil marketer KenolKobil upstaged leading telecom firm Safaricom for the first time in years to become the biggest mover at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) on Tuesday.

The oil marketer saw 8 million shares change hands at between 0.11 U.S. dollars and 0.12 dollars as Safaricom moved 5.4 million shares at between 0.16 dollars and 0.17 dollars.

The NSE-listed oil marketer with operations in Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Zambia and Ethiopia, announced last week a 20 million dollars profit for 2015, up from 11 million dollars.

Following the 84 percent rise in profit, KenolKobil declared a dividend of 0.002 dollars per share, with the good financial results contributing to the performance of its stock at the bourse, according to analysts.

KenolKobil's managing director David Ohana said the group was optimistic that the growth in earnings will be sustained in 2016 and into the future driven by focused expansion of the retail network in countries it operates.

Tuesday trading was, however, subdued with equity turnover recording marginal gains that saw 23 million shares valued at 4.3 million dollars changing hands, against 20 million shares valued at 4.1 million dollars last Friday.

The NSE 20 Share Index was down 5.81 points to stand at 3995.56 while All Share Index shed 0.49 points to stand at 147.07. Similarly, the NSE 25 Share Index was down 17.59 points to settle at 4,248.61.

The banking sector had 3.6 million shares traded, representing 15.3 percent of the day's traded volume. Equity Group Holdings under the category actively moved 1.6 million shares while KCB Group 713,000 shares.

On the other hand, the commercial and allied sector had 688,000 shares traded and accounted for 3 percent of the day's traded volume

The insurance sector had 1.1 million shares traded and accounted for 5 percent of the day's traded volume with Britam Holdings under the category moving 903,000 shares. Endit