13 January or thereabouts

And KCB for njaanuary.

KCB set to reclaim the 40 bob handle it lost months ago following a buy recommendation by Genghis Capital today, and probably the recent appointment of Adil Arshed Khawaja, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya, who previously served as a director of KCB Group, as a director of the Safaricom board.
KCB also handles the Hustler Funds, from where it is disbursed to the telcos.

Herebelow is a sneak preview of Genghis Capital's buy recommendation....
In this week's edition of the Weekly Cross-Asset Strategy Report, we give a recap of the equities and fixed-income markets' performance over the past week and our trading ideas for the coming week.

Our Momentum, Income, and Value equities portfolios continue to outperform the benchmark NSE 20 index. The performance of the Momentum and Income portfolios is ahead of the Nairobi All Share Index (NASI) and the NSE 20 index.

Genghis Trading Ideas for the week…
Equities
Accumulate on KCB – From our intrinsic valuation, we are of the opinion that investors stand to unlock c.44.1% in capital gains from the current market price of KES 39.20 against our fair value estimate of KES 56.50. As such, we recommend a BUY on KCB Group.
Fixed Income
FXD1/2020/005 at 12.35% - 12.55% levels: For investors keen on short term papers, we recommend participating in the FXD1/2020/005 (2.4yrs) auction at 12.35% - 12.55% levels.
FXD1/2022/015 at 14.05% - 14.15% levels: For investors keen on longer term papers, we recommend participating in the FXD1/2022/015 (14.3yrs) auction at 14.05% - 14.15% levels.

NSSF sells Sh837 million KCB shares in rare move

The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) made a rare sale of Sh837.2 million worth of shares in listed tier-one lender KCB Group in the fourth quarter of last year, reversing some of the recent accumulation of the stock.

Disclosures by KCB show that the State-owned pension fund disposed of 21.63 million shares in the three-month period, cutting its ownership of the lender to 8.39 percent in December from 9.07 percent at the end of September.

The fund’s holding of KCB shares fell to 269.7 million units worth Sh10.44 billion by Tuesday’s closing price.

The quarter four sale came after a period of incremental purchases that raised the NSSF’s stake to the nine percent level from 6.12 percent in March 2019.

It will overtake BPR and KCB TZ very fast in terms of profit contribution. In a few years it will compete properly with Rawbank in terms of corporate banking, a sector Equity BCDC was very not keen on from the start

Reported EPS is very good but I have my reservations. I am staying away. The DPS is down from 3 to 2 but that could be attributed to buying TMB and the weaker CARs.

NPLs are worrying.

KCB Kenya is sitting on very very thin capital ratios and NBK still needs more capital. KCB Kenya core capital was down by a whole 22bn. Then there is the issue of 129bn in Gross Non-Performing Loans. It has only provided for only 52bn. Rising interest rates just means lower valuations on the treasury bonds. Retaining profits is the next best step.

because paying higher than that will result in them being in breach of capital and CBK regulations ratios