Saturday, January 10, 2009

NSE weekly catch up: Have we hit the bottom?


The NSE continues to benefit from investors re-positioning to take advantage of the results season. Olympia was highest gainer in the week despite a blind strategy, while Centum and Equity topped the losers table.

The answer to the question is maybe. We did hit bottom at the NSE in October but have we bottomed out? The answer is no and we'll continue to yo-yo along the bottom for a while and may even work ourselves into going  below 3,000. There are various reasons for this not least the uncertain Kenyan macroeconomy and the very sickly global situation. Volumes at the NSE remain wafer-thin (see graph for comparison to the first 6 days in the '08) a combination of the anaemic cash positions of many investors (inflation and school fees) and confidence levels.

Grapevine says that NMG sacked 100 of its journalists. My info has always been that for a listed company, it pays atrociously, so cutting staff might not be the easiest way to reduce costs. Instead, attention should go to its many dailies especially in Kenya. Even a willing, able person like me when on my hols, would struggle to justify buying BDA, DN, and Standard in the same day. Not to mention Daily Metro and Taifa Leo. My suggestion would be for the time being, to make BDA a pullout paper within DN; make daily metro a free newspaper financed by ads and probably re-think Taifa Leo.
FTSE corner: How do you tell the market is lousy? Walk past broker/investment bank offices and see guys sitting down infront of three screens while playing on their blackberries. Normally, you'd see them watching all three screens while holding 2 phones.

4 comments:

odegle said...

I always feel that staff layoff is a very pedestrian way of reducing cost. the most effective way is just to control revenue leakage as well as internal fraud

coldtusker said...

An anon (who is in the Oil Industry) posted interesting comments on my blog. I hope he continues providing us with more info!

bankelele said...

Since it was launched I've maintained that BDaily should be combined with the Nation newspaper
- They can price it at 50 or 60 (they have twice as much content as people and kentimes who are currently priced the same anyway), while Standard wouldn't have an answer
- They would lose sales, in the short term but by having a bigger paper, subscribers would see the value and resume buying (notice how Nairobi city council doubled parking fees but you still can't find a parking in the CBD)

MainaT said...

Od-its because its the easiest way . You know the number of employees you have, and you know how you pay them. Presto
CT-thats is a great breakthru. Well done on the whole topic...
Banks-I hear you. NMG is trying to hit all the niches but going about in the wrong way