Category Archives: Kenya Re

Soaring Monday: Kenya Re opens above the FT Ghost

We are almost at the end of the month of August which Kenyans consider to be jinxed. So far national tragedies have included the annual floods in Budalangi and a village in Kakamega that was destroyed in mud slides, while Nairobi has had the occasional tremors continue since July.

Anyway;

lessons learnt from FT? The statutory manager of Francis Thuo Stockbrokers will begin paying off its clients (who had filed loss claims) from Monday 27th to September 7 – using money paid by new stockbroker Renaissance Capital.

This should not be the end of Francis Thuo and a comprehensive report and sanctions of the company’s management needs to happen. More so because, illegal selling of shares by brokers without permission of some unfortunate shareholders is still going on. Francis Thuo was not a robot selling shares. It had managers and staff who wilfully robbed shareholders of their investment. Has no investor reported them to KACA (even anonymously)? What’s more shocking is that the NSE wants to reward/gift the collapsed stockbroker with more money!

Kenya Reaffirms the IPO dreams of investors by almost doubling to in price on Day 1 after the IPO. The share price reached 18 shillings before settling at 15 – but the allocation to retail investors was measly 12%

Nairobi Wifi II
One drawback to finding a great hotspot is that you have to lug around a $500 laptop to/from parked cars in an anonymous bag – which you then wrap around your chair leg so it does not disappear. But an even worse situation is to arrive there and find that for some reason the network is offline and they can’t fix it till the next day.

Still it’s better than paying $11 an hour for internet access at a hotel, which is even more expensive than before. Ultimately the goal is to have home internet access which is a whole other story.

Here’s Safaricom ISP – in form of their new Bamba net service. It’s a plug & play USB modem which costs 6,000 shillings to connect and 2,000 ($28) per month for unlimited net usage up to 700MB then 10 per MB thereafter – and is available throughout Kenya

Parliament to scrutinize privatization: the Finance Minister has been ordered to gazette a privatization law passed by parliament. This will bring such measure under scrutiny of parliament like the Safaricom IPO, and (within the banking sector) – moves to privatize Consolidated and National bank, or anytime the NSSF wants to divest in shares.

KCB back to UK
KCB to reopen London branch to serve Kenyans living abroad.

KQ soars as Uchumi shrinks
Kenya Airways was ranked 99 among world airlines in terms of operations. And in the first quarter (April to June), the company results showed that with increased capacity (deployment of larger aircraft), they were able to carry 640,128 passengers (9% higher than 2006), but aircraft were less full owing to increased competition.

Meanwhile Uchumi has withdrawn franchise rights to Tesco who have closed their Uchumi branded branches (including the one at railways). from a KTN report

Recent grads can’t be MP’s.
Because the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) wants them to clear their loan dues before they can run for public office including Parliament.

Jobs on Offer
most from the daily papers last week

Anti-illicit trade intelligence analyst at British American Tobacco. D/L is 7/9

Central Bank of Kenya: head of procurement, senior economist(s), manager forex bureaus, financial analyst, lawyer(s), executive director – Kenya school of monetary studies. Apply to the director of HR P O Box 60000-00200 Nairobi by 6/9

Constituency development fund: account managers for 41 constituencies including Makadara, Kamukunji, Starehe, Kasarani, Embakasi, Langata, Likoni, Mvita, Limuru, and Eldoret south . women encouraged to apply and the deadline for applications to cdf@wananchi.com is 21/9

East African Breweries: Buyer, Group Head compliance, indirect tax manager, group tax manager, direct tax manager, finance director, head of supply finance (Uganda) business performance implementation manager financial accountant(inter comp account), head of group procurement, procurement controller cost accountant advertising & promotion analyst service delivery manager

Principal legal officer at the east African development bank. d/l is 7/9

Branch managers at Family Bank. d/l is 5/9

HLB Ashvir: audit manager, audit seniors (Mombasa). Apply to audit@hlbashvir.com by7/9

Private sector development specialist at the IFC. d/l is 10/9

Kenya Airports Authority: auditor operations, auditor finance, auditor information systems. Apply through Hawkins associates

Kenya Commercial Bank: manager in non-electronic fraud, and investigator – forensic services. Apply to recruitment@kcb.co.ke by 7/9

Macroeconomic and financial management institute of eastern and southern Africa (Zimbabwe): director debt management program, program officer – external markets & financial markets development, program officer – financial sector supervision. Apply to capacity@mefmi.org.

Chief executive officer at the Privatization Commission of Kenya to be created. apply through Deloitte at esd@deloitte.co.ke by 6/9

Website editor/content coordinator at UNDP Somalia (Westlands office). Apply to registry.so@undp.org by 7/9

Mid week mix

Fractions of Kenya Re
It appears retail investors will get about 12% of the share that they applied for – leaving a minimum refund of about almost Kshs 17,000 (of the Kshs 19,000) that they applied for. So on to step two of my plan my plan and wait for the shares to open within a reasonable mark up of their IPO price. This is also a reminder to do the same in case of a Safaricom IPO unless they offer a trillion shares

Salvation for investors
So customers of Francis Thuo will get paid from the windfall ($3.5 million) payment by new stockbroker Renaissance Capital. But this should in no way let other brokers and authorities off the hook as they had promised a comprehensive report on what went wrong at the company. And if no NSE investor has lost money since 1954, where are my Uchumi shares?

KCB elite
KCB launches Advantage banking, joining Barclays (with Prestige) and Standard Chartered (with Diva) as offering exclusive banking services for their high net worth customers.

Safaricom is not elite, but…
(i) It’s new in a million shilling promotion cuts of buyers of their low denomination Bamba 50 (50 shilling) airtime cards
(ii) Its EDGE service (internet access) has not been working for moist of this month.

Kenya Re Prospectus

A to Zz

Applause: A clap and sympathy hug to the Kenya Re advisors, just as I am typing this at 3 a.m.; they also had to burn the midnight oil to update the prospectus and keep everything current. Still there are a few typos there and errors there

Auditors? : prospectus has statement from pricewaterhousecoopers, but not KPMG who are the Kenya Re auditors. And their statement was signed on May 28 (so was their audit/investigation reason for the delay)

Directors : or lack thereof. There’s no mention of the former managing director and finance director (how can former directors have 2.5X the loans that current directors have?). Instead there are mentions that no current directors had no unusual dealings with the company

Dividend: Kenya Re has been paying 1 shilling per share previously, but they project just Kshs. 0.25 for 2007 (out of an EPS of 0.89)

Earthquake: yesterday and evacuation of high rise buildings gave me a chance to stroll down and get a copy of the prospectus

Employees: are only 115, but they get a raw deal and have to buy a minimum of 2,000 shares like everyone else. Plus they were almost retrenched.

Fluff to ZZZZ: insurance is a boring (through lucrative) business. And a good chunk of the prospectus is taken up by narrative on the insurance sector, reinsurance sector, and how Kenya Re is supposed to make money. Association of Kenya Insures should get paid for how much of their content (a 2005 report) is used in the prospectus

Investments: Kshs. 3.3 billion in property, 615m in mortgages (doubled from 2005), 2.2 b in quoted shares (1/3 is KCB, ¼ is BAT, 1/5 is Barclays), 2.1 b in government securities

JKIA: Kenya Re has land along the passenger terminal road at the airport where it plans/hopes to put up a hotel for transit passengers.

Kenya National Assurance: an attempt to roll it (KNAC 2001) appears to be largely responsible for increase of the IPO cost by over 100 million to a budgeted Kshs. 289 million shillings. (Kengen budgeted 400m to raise 7.8 billion). Increased advertising costs (over many months) was offset by reduced printing costs

Mortgages: Kenya Re does not come to mind when you think of mortgage companies, but they do offer finance to home buyers esp. of their residential properties like Villa Franca and South C houses.

Projections: or lack thereof. I remember the Equity listing prospectus had several calculation methods to come up with the value their shares. This one is scant, but maybe they were thrown out of whack. The fact that the prospectus pegs the US$ at 73 shillings shows how many months ago it may have been synthesized.

A Qualified institutional investor: is financial institution or investment funds (expected to buy 100,000 shares minimum). So is this, like a US IPO, where an investment bank can parcel out shares to preferred select clients?

Real estate: a big investment of Kenya Re and almost half the portfolio. But not how upper hill properties are worth much less than before owing to increased availability

A Share certificate: is still an option for IPO investors here – some people still don’t believe in CDS or trade their shares (buy and hold for dividends and AGM)

Valuation: see projections

Verdict: Kenya Re is Parastatal that lucky to be where it is today (it was almost sold a mere Kshs 400m song in 2002). It still operates under the notorious state corporations act and is not immune from politics and politicians, and was subject to machinations by former directors that seem to have delayed IPO. Still it’s a good Buy, but after the IPO, and when it lists on August 28.

Earthquake week

1 ½ years ago a single tremor was a big story. Now they are coming every few hours – today we felt them at 11:50a.m. 1:30p.m, 2:35p.m. and 3:05 p.m. what’s going on at Lake Natron TZ?

Dud dividend Got my biggest dividend cheque ever (i.e. most digits) i.e. a 25,000 Uganda – a payoff from the Stanbic Uganda IPO. But it is almost impossible to cash it in. Stanbic Nairobi look at you like you came from outer space, while my other banks tell met it will cost more than it’s’ worth (about Kshs 1,000) to clear. Remember that next time you go buying shares in Uganda or Tanzania I wish there was a good dividend reinvestment program in place. – I may endorse it to my stockbroker even though there’s not a lot of shares I could but for that (Eveready perhaps?). Any suggestions?

edit Sent in my reader Drop My Load who comments:
Stanbic have issued an email that goes like this:

Dear All,
A few banks have requested me to ask Stanbic Bank Kenya to come with a solution to paying the KES equivalent of the Stanbic Uganda Divident cheques. Stanbic Bank Kenya team has since gotten a solution that I would like to share with you.

Below is a statement from Stanbic Bank Kenya, which we would be grateful if you pass along to the relevant branches and clients who invested in Stanbic Bank Uganda.

” In case of non SBK customers who choose to deposit their dividend warrants in the accounts in other local banks, these banks will route the cheques through SBK for collection in the normal interbank way for foreign cheque collection

The collection period will be 14 days and we shall credit the proceeds by the 15th day. The charges will be – amounts below 1000 will cost ksh 100 and amounts above ksh 1000 will cost ksh 150.”

Ask your bank, they should be able to help.

Strange banking: It’s always a sensitive thing to write about banks since they have customers – some of who are likely to panic and withdraw their funds. But there’s no danger of that with fast growing and strong Equity Bank. Just days before their listing in 2006, one of their directors resigned – could this be the reason?

Loan shares resurface: I&M becomes the first bank to hawk loans to buy Kenya Re IPO shares.

Milk tremor: KCC has overnight raised the price of their plastic milk pouches (500 ml) from Kshs. 22 to 26 (%18). More plastic tax aftershocks?

Idea exchange: Call for papers

Nairobist is a great investment site with reports and charts like those in the business daily.

There as an investment report put out on Dyer & Blair that I was able to pull up from their site to read.

– They are also looking for a full time blogger – details here

– Anyone with a copy of the actual Kenya re prospectus, please email it to me? (investment bank analysis also welcome)

– Aly Khan Satchu, who used to post comments here, now has an occasional stock tips column in the Nairobi star newspaper. (His Web site)