The market is witnessing mixed performance, with investors saving up for pending privatisations and promised IPOs, the first of which will be that of Sedi Krir Petrochemicals (Sedipec). Sherine Abdel-Razek reports Sedipec which will be offered for sale sometime in late May. Also, Telecom Egypt has officially invited investment banks to participate in its privatisation evaluation as well, with the sale expected before yearend. The first two days of this week witnessed buoyant transactions, thanks to Raya Holding IPO and the 20 per cent stake sale in Sedipec. The two transactions together pushed the overall market turnover on Monday to LE648.6 million. An IT heavyweight, Raya Holdings' debut in the market is a notable development . The company's IPO included the sell of six million shares representing 27 per cent of the company's shares in an LE162.2 million worth transaction in a private placement which means a limited number of subscribers. Foreigners, with a large concentration of Gulf Arabs, subscribed in the offer by 70 per cent. The company is also planning for an LE175 million capital increase limited only to current shareholders. The market's 30 most actively traded companies (the CASE30 index) ended both Sunday and Monday transactions in the red. The previous week's transactions started with the index heading north thanks to positive results from a number of blue chips. However, some investors ended the week by liquidating their holdings to have enough money to subscribe in the coming sell-offs. The index ended the week with a slight 0.3 per cent increase 4,426 points on Thursday 12 May 2005. The total value traded reached LE1,974 million compared to LE1,228 million during the previous week. Vodafone Egypt released the fiscal year 2004/2005 results ending March, in which net profit fell three per cent to LE1.05 billion with FY2005 representing the company's first taxable year. Another good performer was Al-Watany Bank of Egypt, which captured investor interest following its reporting of very strong annual growth in the first quarter figures ending March. A Prime Securities report said that the seven times hike in net income is attributable to a huge increase of 94.8 per cent in net interest income to LE33.5 million, coupled with a significant advance of 62.8 per cent in non-interest income to LE47.7 million. The share ended the week at LE14.33. However, MIBank stole the spotlight on news that Banque Misr has short-listed four bidders for its 26 per cent stake sale in the bank. The four bidders are the French banks Societe Generale and BNP Paribas, Britain's Barclays Pls and Bahrain's Ahli United Bank. SocGen and Barclays have both recently increased their stakes in their Egyptian operations. Banque Misr holds about 25.5 per cent in MIBank and other institutional shareholders together own a further 32.25 per cent. The balance is free floated. The news pushed the shares eight per cent up to LE42. National Cement Company offered the only significant news in the cement sector with its chairman Nabil El-Gabri, announcing an LE242.4 million capital gain booked over FY05, as a result of the sale of its 4.03 million share stake in Suez Cement. He also revealed plans to sell its 9.6 per cent stake in Arab Swiss Engineering Company -- ASEC, at an approximate price of LE234 per share. The final date now stands at 30 May 2005. According to Prime Report, El-Gabri said the funds generated from the aforementioned stake sales are to be directed towards funding a production capacity increase from the current 2.8 million tonnes per annum. ASEC has been making a lot of headlines recently, and was ranked as the third in value of traded shares during last week. As for GDRs, out of the nine Egyptian companies with shares traded as GDRs in London Stock Exchange, only that of Pachin declined through the week, according to the report released by the Cairo Stock Exchange. Meanwhile that of Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) recorded the highest gains over the week with its GDR price jumping by 17 per cent.
