Category Archives: Athi River Mining

Safaricom @ NSE Day 6

Deals 5,624
Turnover 821 million shillings ($13 million)
Avg price 7.91
Closing price 7.90 (up 6.38%)
High 8.15
Low 7.70
Last 7.95
Shares volume 103.8 million shares

Commentary: The Bourse had a delayed start. It was a very bullish session. We are now toying with 8.00 and a break of which will project us another 10% higher- Courtesy of Rich.Co.Ke [NSE data vendor]

Lessons Learnt from Safaricom

1. Don’t invest in IPO’s! avoid the queues, time value lost, miniscule allocations, rogue broker tales, bank charges, fraudsters etc.
2. If you must invest, go for those with ‘higher’ minimum investments of Kshs. 50,000 or 100,000. e.g. Access Kenya a ‘relatively unknown’ (to wananchi) was priced at 50,000 and still ended up with 25,000 shareholders who got a reasonable allocation.
3. If advance payment is unfair for foreign investors and QII, it is also unfair for wananchi (retail investors)
4. Bank IPO loans should be banned.
Both of the above two factors destabilize the banking sector
5. We don’t need foreign investors. The local investors over-subscribed the entire allocation. The Renaissance Boss once talked about how it was not possible to invest $20 million without distorting the NSE. We are a retail, small corporate, local bourse and should accept that,
6. We don’t need the kind of foreign investors we appear to have got. African bourses need long term investors with three to five year horizons – not 3 to 5 day ones who cash in for 2 shillings.

ARM dust?
What happened at the Athi River Mining AGM last week? The vote results on the proposal to split the company into two subsidiaries appears to have only had the backing of the MD who accounted for almost all the votes for the move to be approved.

Business Briefs – May 24

most from the papers this week

Strathmore to train entrepreneurs: Strathmore University has launched an Enterprise Development Centre (SEDC) to train entrepreneurs in management of SME’s. This will be done through a six month certificate program in entreprenual management that covers, among other aspects, taxation & law, financial recordkeeping, managing HR, business planning, risk management, diversification, capital budgeting and excellence in customer service. It will use locally developed case studies and also provide networking opportunities and access to service providers through a business club.

ARM split: Athi River Mining intends to spin off its cement, and mineral & chemical operations into two wholly owned subsidiaries;
– ARM Cement Limited – who will continue with the manufacture and sell cement and limestone – (the new Kaloleini factory will be transferred to the subsidiary)
– ARM Minerals & Chemicals Limited – who will produce minerals and sodium silicate building products – (the Athi River factory will be transferred to the subsidiary)

Invest in Uchumi: Gearing up for a revival is Uchumi Supermarkets whose Receiver Manager has places an international tender for financial firms who will assist in the for (i) pre-qualification of financial bidders and (ii) selection of winning bids to become strategic equity partners (new investors in Uchumi). D/L is 6/6

Milky at NSE?: Preparing for a possible listing at the Nairobi Stock Exchange is New KCC who published their financial accounts this week for the year ended June 2007, which showed that they had exceeded the performance over the previous 18 month period; New KCC had assets of 4.7 billion shillings (up from 4.0b in 18 months to 06/2006), turnover of 4.5 billion (compared to 4.9b) and a pre-tax profit of 284 million (compared to 350 m) – after paying over 2 billion shillings to dairy farmers. Meanwhile Sameer is making dairy waves in Uganda

Derailment?: Rift Valley Railways in trouble with the Governments of Kenya and Uganda over the performance of the railway concession. Last year it appeared they had turned the corner in terms of performance.

FYI: You can track NSE shares in real time for free at Rich.co.ke

ARM to retire bonds

Athi River Mining will convert 125 million shillings worth of corporate bonds into shares in the company as existing shareholders will be asked to approve the creation of 25 million new shares for this purpose.

The bonds were launched in October 2005. Of the 800m raised 600 was for completion of clinker plant in Kaloleni (near Mombasa) and 200 million was for repayment of bank debt.

Other corporate bonds include Faulu Kenya, PTA Bank and Mabati – with few new issues expected and little trading in them. Previous corporate bond giants – Safaricom and Celtel (who also retired their bonds early), opted to get bank financing the last time they needed expansion funds.

Friday, news, jobs

Pesa Point ATM’s
Pesa Point, an independent network of automated teller machines (ATM’s) will officially launch on Friday October 21st. In a Sunday Nation feature on the launch (PDF) , Paynet MD Bernard Mathewman said eight partners are expected to be part of the initial launch. One Bank likely to be among the first partners is Equity Bank. Also NIC, whose major shareholders own Paynet could also link up their 17 MOVE Zone ATM’s to Pesa Point.

The company says 30 are ready now and they hope to have 120 independent pesa point ATM’s by year end in hotel lobbies, supermarkets, petrol stations, and other retail outlets (Caltex has already signed on). For comparison, Co-operative Bank has 58 ATM’s (31 in Nairobi) and KCB has 86, with plans to have 115 by the end of the year while another network of shared ATM’s, Kenswitch, was launch in 2003 and now has about a dozen banks whose customers use each others 30 ATM’s.

New Bond available
The Athi River Mining bond is now available to investors. The Issue is for Kshs 800 million, offered on a floating rate basis with a final maturity in 2010 and is priced at a margin of 175 basis points (1.75%) above the 91 day T-Bill.

Applications and payments must be delivered to to either Barclays Financial Services, Stanbic Bank Kenya, Dyer & Blair Investment Bank, Ashbhu Securities Limited, or Dry Associates Limited by 3.00 p.m. on Monday, 24 October 2005 with payment made out by banker’s Cheque or by bank transfer/remittance to the Athi River Mining Ltd Bond Receiving Payments Account, in the books of Cooperative Bank, Account Number 011 2030 2835 00, Branch Code 11002, Nairobi. If the offer is over-subscribed, preference will be given to investors in notes greater than 5 million shillings. The bond will then be listed on the sting on the NSE, availing a secondary trading market

KRA anniversary
Also on Friday, President Kibaki will mark the 10th anniversary of the Kenya Revenue Authority at KICC.

Nairobi marathon
The registration deadline for the Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon has been extended to Saturday. Many City roads will be closed on Sunday morning to facilitate the marathon.

Low cost housing scheme
Superior Homes will put up 400 3- bedroom apartments bungalows (phase 1) to be known as Green Park Housing Development at Stoney Athi, along Mombasa road.

Jobs
several accounting positions: at Safaricom Details will soon be posted at their website and the deadline for applications to hr@safaricom.co.ke is 25th October. Positions are:

– senior accountant – reporting
– senior accountant – financial systems & analysis
– senior accountant – accounts receivables
– senior accountant – payables (2 positions: local and foreign)
– senior accountant – general ledger
– senior accountant – cash book
– accountant – accounts payable (2 positions: local and foreign)
– accountant – accounts receivables
– cashier

chief accountant: at Oserian Development Company (one of Kenya’s largest flower grower based in Naivasha). Job entails supervising all accounts and payroll staff, data input for preparation of monthly financial statements and audits, financial and system controls, treasury management and compliance with legislative and accounting standard. Applicants must have bachelor’s degrees (accounts or finance option) and at least 3 years work experience at senior management level preferably as chief financial accountant. Must also be a fully qualified accountant with 5 years work experience. Apply to the human resource manager, jobs@oserian.com by November 4.

loans manager: at the Kenya Tourism Development Corporation. Job entails drawing and implementing lending policies to facilitate processing award and recovery process. Also maintain records of loan applications, set performance objectives, coordinate staff and educate the public on the corporations lending policies and requirements. Applicants should have an economics degree with a bias towards development finance, postgraduate finance qualification and at least 10 years relevant working experience at a senior level. Apply to the managing director, ktdc@wananchi.co.ke by October 26