Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Why I can’t invest with Cytonn

Cytonn are creating a cult-like following of the naives who believe in everything dished to them and have little time to look at the questionable story that’s Cytonn’s “Success Story.”

In as much as I appreciate Dande and his team in their entrepreneurial journey, I find it hard to believe that a company that’s deep into the real estate sector (with long term, capital intensive projects in an already saturated sector) is sustainably going to weather the financial storm through leveraging on short-term shareholder funding.

If you thought Home Afrika was a wrong investment, hold on for Cytonn; we are about to see some serious collateral debt obligation happen probably like never before in Kenya.

There is always a huge tendency for shareholders to prefer few owners when they are doing well. The fact that Cytonn wants to get listed on the NSE so urgently can only mean two things; either they are trying to raise cash ( because a good chunk of their cash is still held up in Chase Bank, Nakumatt CP and bonds), or the founding shareholders are trying to exit the easy way we all know how; by selling their ambitions to the dumb public.

Their projects don’t seem to raise much appetite from the broke public… We discussed greatly before about how Home Afrika goofed up by creating a huge supply of real estate solutions for a hypothetical “middle class” that they sadly realized doesn’t exist and the few that really exists prefers to either rent or build their own cheaper houses instead.

Cytonn with their expertise should have known better and focused more on the real “real estate demand” segment which is an average of units costing Kes 3 Million – 6 Million or rentals of around Kes 20,000 – Kes 50,000.

Doing sophisticated projects is today’s suicide mission in real estate. It is only good for the window-shoppers who will take Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp pictures but not much in revenue for the owners… and I guess Cytonn have found that out a bit too late into the mud and are now counting on the public naivety to buy into their IPO plan.

Has the Capital Markets Authority even granted them an operational licence yet?

Kenyans need to tread carefully on this one. For those planning to participate in the IPO, good luck. I will just grab a jar of popcorn and watch from the fences on this one.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. What a senseless article. What kenyans need is good living and business space in an expanding economy and that is what Cytonn is providing. As expected you have not included one single statistic in your story because you dont know what you are talking about. Please go Cytonn homepage but first google the word ‘diversification’ …nkt.

  2. Ignorance is not an excuse, I invested in Home Africa and we used to have those hyped meetings in posh hotels. We are now almost doomed, one million investment in 2012 else where e.g. a plot in merblery or kamiti corner is now worth 4-5million. CAUTION is key

  3. Real estate is nose diving in Kenya, supply for middle class houses is more than the demand. To prove seek bank financing for a commercial construction loan, most banks are not allowing it as they know real estate is saturated. Most corrupt money before new notes were introduced, were channeled to real estate.

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