Monday, 23 March 2015 21:47
NAIROBI: Kenya’s shilling was stable on Monday, supported by offshore investors preparing to participate in this week’s government bond sale, while stocks closed lower.
The shilling closed trade at 91.90/92.10 to the dollar, little changed on Friday’s close of 92.00/92.10.
“We won’t see any changes until the bond auction flows are over,” Julius Kiriinya, trader at African Banking Corporation, said.
The central bank will auction an infrastructure bond worth 25 billion shillings ($ 272 million) on Wednesday, which traders say has attracted foreign investor interest.
Some investors were looking for any shilling weakness to buy the currency to invest in other assets, such as shares or bonds.
On the Nairobi Securities Exchange, the main NSE-20 Share Index was down 38.74 points to close at 5,265.67 points, driven by profit-taking that started when the index scaled a seven-year peak in early March.
“It’s just a bit of sell-off, rather profit-taking so far, mostly still in reaction to earnings that are coming in,” Silha Rasugu, research analyst at Genghis Capital, said, referring to a slew of company results.
Shares in Nation Media Group closed 2.4 percent lower at 245.00 shillings, weakening the market further. The company reported a 1 percent rise in 2014 pretax profit to 3.62 billion shillings.
“For NMG and the media houses, their earnings have not been the best,” Rasugu said.
“If you look at the industry outlook, it’s going to get more competitive on the digital platform, because advertisers will have so many options of where to channel their content.”
Kenya’s government has switched off all analogue television signals as part of a global migration to digital broadcast by June, which is expected to introduce competitors to mainstream television stations, including those run by NMG.
On the secondary market, government bonds worth 283 million shillings ($ 3 million) were traded, down from 874.10 million shillings on Friday.
Copyright Reuters, 2015
