The following analysis on the Nairobi Securities Exchange by investment guru, Aly Khan Satchu, was first published in The Star.
“The Nairobi Securities Exchange has been on a Kerry Packer type winning streak. Kerry Packer was an Australian tycoon who founded World Series Cricket which was a break away professional cricket competition staged between 1977 and 1979. World Series Cricket started the innovation process which re-invented cricket.
Kerry Packer was a famous and lucky gambler and apparently walked into Vegas one evening and there is a noisy Texas Oil-Man around whom all the attractive girls are buzzing like bees and he calls over the waiter and asks;
”How much is that man worth”
The waiter responds ” $60m.”
Packer walks over and introduces himself and takes out a coin and says ” “I’ll toss you for $60m”
Packer was, more remarkably, once reported to have won 20 hands of baccarat in a row at Las Vegas.
The reason Packer came to my mind was in part because the Cricket World Cup is underway and because The Nairobi Securities Exchange has been on a red hot winning streak of mythic proportions. The Nairobi NSE20 has soared +7.42 per cent and to a more than seven year high. The Nairobi All Share has ramped +7.87 per cent higher so far. We have been in a full-on bull market for over 36 months now.
We are now slap, bang and in the middle of the earnings season at the bourse. And last week, I took myself off [and my camera crew – I really am pleased with my investment in some ”pukka” camera equipment because what is clear now is that we are in a revolutionary digital moment] to the Hilton Hotel to hear the earnings release from Kenya Commercial Bank. What caught my attention and everyone else’s was an eye-popping acceleration of Sh100 billion in the asset base year-on-year. That was the signal in the noise. Mr. Oigara characterises this moment in our region as a catalytic moment. If you believe its a catalytic moment then putting a Sh100 billion to work is a serious statement and that’s the point.
Further evidence of why this is the moment to be putting Sh100 billion to work was a report carried on Bloomberg last week which stated:
”The world is expected to grow 3.2 per cent in 2015 and 3.7 per cent next year after expanding 3.3 per cent in each of the past two years, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. China, the Philippines, Kenya, India and Indonesia, which together make up about 16 per cent of global gross domestic product, are all forecast to grow more than five per cent in 2015.”
Kenya ranked third in Bloomberg’s All-Stars of the Global Economy for 2015.”
