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Trading at Nairobi bourse defies blue-chips gains, falls 62 pct

Xinhua, May 12, 2016 Adjust font size:

Some 14 million shares worth 2.1 million U.S. dollars exchanged hands Thursday at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) as trading fell 62 percent, defying analysts' expectations.

Several blue chips, including Kenya's leading telecom Safaricom, released their financial results this week, a move that analysts expected would boost trading at the bourse. But the equity turnover dropped from 6.1 million dollars on a volume of 21 million shares on Wednesday.

Safaricom, which announced a profit of 380 million dollars Wednesday, moved 1.1 million shares Thursday on a price that edged towards 0.18 dollars, from about 0.17 dollars during previous trading session. The company had traded 4.4 million shares Wednesday.

Equity Bank, which announced a profit of 50 million dollars Tuesday, traded a paltry 244,000 shares at 0.40 dollars. The company's 9 million shares had changed hands Wednesday.

Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) Group that is readying to announce its quarter one profit actively moved 1.2 million shares as in the previous trading session at a high of 0.43 dollars.

In total, the banking sector had 1.7 million shares traded, representing a paltry 12 of the day's traded volume.

The energy and petroleum sector had 5.3 million shares traded, accounting for 38 percent of the day's traded volume.

The commercial and services sector moved 3.3 million shares, which accounted for 23 percent of the day's traded volume.

The stifled trading saw the NSE 20 Share Index go down 11 points to stand at 3,923.42 while the All Share Index (NASI) ended 0.23 points higher to stand at 146.44 and the NSE 25 Share Index was up 0.49 points to settle at 4,216.05.

The bond market had securities worth 31 million dollars transacted compared to 23 million dollars transacted in the previous session. Enditem