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I thank Debarl for the Invite to his Panel on NTV this morning.

Macro Thoughts

Home Thoughts

We were not going as far as that; only two days’ journey in the
ox-cart to a bit of El Dorado my father had been fortunate enough to
buy in the bar of the Norfolk Hotel from a man wearing an Old Etonian
tie,” so says Elspeth Huxley’s The Flame Trees of Thika which is a
beautiful and lyrical book.

Mount Kenya Safari Club in Nanyuki (founded 1959) became a mecca for
the international jet set. The property sits on the slopes of Mt
Kenya. I have sat at the bar and half expected William Holden or Adnan
Khashoggi to pop in. My most intense memory is of discovering a
complete  lm studio on the grounds, and walking around in the evening
light alone.

"Politicians populate an insulated world of their own, while companies
live in another sphere."

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says in her
new book that Donald Trump made her skin crawl by stalking her around
the stage in a campaign debate and she wonders if she should have told
him to "back up, you creep."

In audio excerpts of the book "What Happened" aired on Wednesday on
MSNBC, Clinton described her 2016 campaign as "joyful, humbling,
infuriating and just plain baffling" and acknowledged she failed her
millions of supporters by losing to Trump in the November election.

In the excerpts, Clinton described the Oct. 9 debate in St. Louis in
which Trump followed her closely about the stage, lurking behind her
as she fielded questions from a live television audience. The debate
came two days after an audiotape emerged in which Trump was heard
bragging about groping women.

"This is not OK, I thought," Clinton says. "It was the second
presidential debate and Donald Trump was looming behind me.

The Middle East and North Africa bore the brunt of last year's
violence, according to figures from the Global Terrorism Database
maintained by the University of Maryland.

Wednesday's report said Western Europe suffered 269 out of a total of
13,488 attacks and 0.7 percent of victims - 238 out of 34,676.

In contrast, attacks killed 19,121 people in north Africa and the
Middle East - 55 percent of the total.

WPP Plc shares had their biggest drop in 17 years after the world’s
largest advertising company cut its full-year revenue forecast amid
lower spending by customers, in particular consumer-goods
manufacturers.

The stock fell as much as 12 percent after WPP said like-for-like
revenue growth is expected to be between zero and 1 percent in 2017.
That’s down from an earlier 2 percent forecast.

Advertising companies worldwide are being hit as their biggest clients
-- who face low global economic growth and technological disruption --
increasingly focus on cost-cutting to preserve margins. London-based
WPP singled out ad spending on consumer goods -- items such as laundry
detergent and toothpaste that make up about one-third of its revenue
-- as coming under particular pressure.

Consumer goods giant Unilever, one of WPP’s biggest customers, said
earlier this year it was reducing spending on ad production by 30
percent and that it would halve the number of creative agencies it
works with to 1,500 from 3,000.

“In the last year or so, growth has become even more difficult to
find,” Chief Executive Officer Martin Sorrell said in a statement.
“For the short-term, we have to weather the storm.”

Euro 1.1793
Dollar Index 93.33
Japan Yen 109.27
Swiss Franc 0.9651
Pound 1.2802
Aussie 0.7877
India Rupee 64.075
South Korea Won 1128.41
Brazil Real 3.1409
Egypt Pound 17.7040
South Africa Rand 13.1825

Imagine the publisher of Pornhub.com being asked to address Harvard
University undergraduates on the virtues of running a socially
responsible business. That’s basically what happened in Japan this
past December, when the country’s most prestigious private university
extended an invitation to adult entertainment mogul Keishi Kameyama.

After years of being rejected for bank loans and frozen out of
business deals, the onetime pariah is now being embraced as an
internet pioneer, and even a role model. His ever-evolving media and
technology empire, DMM.com, started with pornography but has grown
into a vast collection of enterprises that have made him one of
Japan’s richest people.

It may seem strange that the operator of an online mall for hardcore
sex videos has won such public acceptance, but Japan has always had a
sort of look-the-other-way tolerance for pornography. More
significantly, Kameyama has expanded into an eclectic portfolio of
businesses that now include a currency trading platform, video games,
an online English school and solar farms. Last year, porn was less
than a third of the group’s $1.7 billion in sales.

“People are starting to realize just how smart this guy is,” says
Akira Ishihara, president at Tokyo-based consultancy Kiseki Keiei
Risya, who featured Kameyama at a seminar on start-ups last year.
“He’s extremely forward-looking and the way he puts cash to work is
just very, very smart.”

To get a sense of the momentum behind the current rally in base
metals, take a look at the relative performance of other commodities
in the past 12 months. Bloomberg’s Industrial Metals Index has
advanced almost 30 percent, while gauges for energy, agriculture and
precious metals are negative. The weaker dollar, efforts to rein in
supply and China’s economic growth have fueled the gains.

U.S. crude #oil futures settle at $48.41/bbl. ⬆$0.58. +1.21%.
@Lee_Saks 48.20

As recently as 1999, investors seeking a 6 percent yield on a
government bond could have bought 10-year U.S. Treasuries. These days
they can’t even get that from Mongolia.

Central-bank bond buying has compressed yields in developed markets to
unprecedented levels, pushing investors further down the risk spectrum
in a hunt for higher returns. Yields on Mongolian dollar bonds
maturing in 2021 fell below 6 percent for the first time on record
late last month after dropping 3.5 percentage points this year.

Yields on 2019-maturity Ukrainian debt and seven-year Belarussian
bonds issued in June have also moved below 6 percent in the past two
months. All three former Communist nations have a Bloomberg Composite
rating of CCC+, or seven levels below investment grade. In a Bloomberg
index of emerging-market sovereign dollar debt, only El Salvador,
Barbados and Venezuela are rated lower.

Frontier Markets

Every African nation that sold dollar debt now has at least one junk
grade, but it would be hard to tell by looking at the bond market.

The average yield on sovereign Eurobonds in Africa has hovered near
the lowest level in two years this month, according to a Standard Bank
Group Ltd. index, even after Moody’s Investors Service cut Namibia to
below investment grade on Aug. 11. The world’s biggest producer of
marine diamonds was the continent’s only dollar-bond issuer without a
junk rating.

A low interest rate environment in the developed world has been
encouraging investors to look past the problems plaguing African
economies, including low commodity prices, dollar shortages in some of
them and rising political tension in others.

“The dynamics around African Eurobonds are mostly driven by external
rather than domestic factors,” said Ronak Gopaldas, a
Johannesburg-based Africa strategist at FirstRand Ltd.’s Rand Merchant
Bank. “Since late 2014, the continent’s economic fortunes have
declined due to the combination of bad luck and own goals.”

But as poorly as most African economies are performing, they’re
nowhere near as bad as they were in the 1980s, when oil plunged to
about $10 a barrel, according to Renaissance Capital Ltd.’s chief
economist, Charles Robertson.

The region “is doing so much better” compared to then, said Robertson,
who’s based in London. “Despite more countries borrowing from the
private sector, there has not been a wave of defaults like we saw
among emerging-market countries back in the 1980s.”

The continent’s Eurobonds have outperformed emerging markets,
returning investors about 9 percent in 2017 compared with 7.7 percent
for developing nations as a whole.

The average yield for dollar-securities sold by sovereign issuers from
the continent fell to 6.14 percent on Aug. 3, the lowest level since
2015, according to Standard Bank’s index. It has since risen one basis
point to 6.15 percent as of Tuesday.

“All rallies usually come to an end, but predicting the peak is hard,”
said David Cowan, an Africa economist at New York-based Citigroup Inc.

An unofficial result is expected by Friday.

But there may be no formal announcement for two weeks as ballot boxes
wend their way along pot-holed roads and dirt tracks in a country of
28 million spread across an area twice the size of France.

“The most probable outcome remains an MPLA victory, but with a much
enhanced performance by the opposition.”

“D-day has arrived,” Domingos Francisco said Wednesday as he stood in
line behind dozens of voters outside one of a handful of blue tents
that are being used as polling stations in the Rangel neighborhood in
Luanda, the capital. “I arrived at 5 a.m. because I was anxious to
vote.” Balloting started at 7 a.m. and is scheduled to end at 6 p.m.

Dollar versus Rand 6 Month Chart INO 13.1825
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_USDZAR&v=d6&t=c&a=50&w=1

Nigeria All Share Bloomberg +37.90% 2017
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/NGSEINDX:IND

Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg +37.36% 2017
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GGSECI:IND

Par Value:
Closing Price:           15.45
Total Shares Issued:          1938415838.00
Market Capitalization:        29,948,524,697
EPS:             1.28
PE:                 12.070

H1 Gross earned premiums 11.236317b vs. 10.520271b +6.806%
H1 Reinsurance premium ceded [1.491205b] vs. [1.639368b] -9.038%
H1 Net earned premium 9.745112b vs. 8.880903b +9.731%
H1 Investment income 2.772369b vs. 2.726124b +1.696%
H1 Net unrealised fair value gains on financial assets at fair value
through profit or loss 1.181529b vs. [0.342357b] +445.116%
H1 Commissions earned 514.775m vs. 416.941m +23.465%
H1 Total revenue 14.692991b vs. 12.687283b +15.809%
H1 Insurance claims and loss adjustment expenses [5.328867b] vs.
[4.259527b] +25.105%
H1 Change in actuarial value of policyholder benefits [2.301644b] vs.
86.536m -2,759.753%
H1 Net insurance benefits and claims [6.669113b] vs. [3.608468b] +84.818%
H1 Interest payments/ increase in unit value [513.893m] vs. [639.912m] -19.693%
H1 Operating and other expenses [3.898804b] vs. [3.529665b] +10.458%
H1 Commissions payable [1.816824b] vs. [1.825156b] -0.457%
H1 Total expenses [13.488406b] vs. [10.117247b] +33.321%
H1 Profit before tax 1.282214b vs. 2.873298b -55.375%
H1 Profit for the year 995.089m vs. 1.778895b -44.565%
Basic and diluted EPS 0.51 vs. 0.92 -44.565%
Total equity 19.202168b vs. 18.964036b +1.256%
Total assets 90.622836b vs. 81.687682b +10.938%
Insurance contract liabilities 21.467000b vs. 21.830980b -1.667%
No interim dividend

Company Commentary

Performance of the group in the year was resilient in the current
market conditions
Total income +16%
core insurance business which accounts for 66% [2016:70%] of the Total
revenue, remained the key focus generating revenue growth of 10% to
9.7b compared to 8.9b in June 2016
The EV as at June 2017 ad grown by 20% from December 2016 to close at
13.3b with a return of EV at 19.9% [annualised return of 39.8%]
compared to a return of 7.2% last year
Investment income [dividends and interest] increased by 15% from 2.1b
in June 2016 to 2.5b.
Investment in equities returned fair value gains amounted to 2..1b
compared to a loss of 328m in June 2016
regional businesses contributed revenue of 1.2b [June 2016:15% of net
earned premiums, 12% of total Income and 6% of total assets of the
Group.
Group's asset base increased to 90.6b versus 83.6b in December 2016
AUM 124.5b

Conclusions

They have the largest Listed Portfolio and tis will be marked up big
at the FY mark.
They were lapping an unusually strong H1 2016
Buy on Dips.

Par Value:                  5/-
Closing Price:           36.00
Total Shares Issued:          639945603.00
Market Capitalization:        23,038,041,708
EPS:             6.77
PE:                 5.318

Well established Kenyan commercial bank.

NIC Bank Limited H1 2017 results through 30th June 2017 vs. 30th June 2016

H1 Kenya Government securities held to maturity 14.036252b vs.
10.134937b +38.494%
H1 Kenya Government securities available for sale 27.452746b vs.
15.855713b +73.141%
H1 Loans and advances to customers (net) 116.769833b vs. 112.150830b +4.119%
H1 Total assets 189.489824b vs. 169.058335b +12.085%
H1 Customer deposits 133.158753b vs. 112.000727b +18.891%
H1 Total equity 32.567413b vs. 28.289935b +15.120%
H1 Total interest income 8.811468b vs. 9.855982b -10.598%
H1 Total interest expense [3.412563b] vs. [3.780868b] -9.741%
H1 Net interest income 5.398905b vs. 6.075114b -11.131%
H1 Total non-interest income 2.008997b vs. 2.157086b -6.865%
H1 Total operating income 7.407902b vs. 8.232200b -10.013%
H1 Loan loss provision [1.445703b] vs. [2.109668b] -31.472%
H1 Total operating expenses [4.489514b] vs. [5.013518b] -10.452%
H1 Profit before tax and exceptional items 2.918388b vs. 3.218682b -9.330%
H1 Profit after tax and exceptional items 2.029763b vs. 2.305102b -11.945%
EPS 3.17 vs. 3.60 -11.944%
Interim dividend – vs. 0.25 -100.000%
Gross NPL and Advances 14.341928b vs. 12.565456b +14.138%
Total NPL and Advances 12.653907b vs. 12.012000b +5.344%
Net NPL and Advances 7.521208b vs. 8.059105b -6.674%
Liquidity ratio 45.65% vs. 38.63% +7.020%

Conclusions

NIC is surely the Bull Outlier in the Tier 2 Banking segment.
Increased holdings of GOK bonds and grew the Loan Book +4.119%.

Par Value:                  5/-
Closing Price:           23.25
Total Shares Issued:          175028706.00
Market Capitalization:        4,069,417,415
EPS:             3.55
PE:                 6.549

Leading multinational energy company.

H1 Gross sales 71.759795b vs. 48.874772b +46.824%
H1 Indirect taxes and duties [13.082998b] vs. [9.895382b] +32.213%
H1 Net sales 58.676797b vs. 38.979390b +50.533%
H1 Cost of sales [54.459794b] vs. [35.356648b] +54.030%
H1 Gross profit 4.217003b vs. 3.622742b +16.404%
H1 Other income 431.803m vs. 396.499m +8.904%
H1 Operating expenses [2.987122b] vs. [2.531651b] +17.991%
H1 Finance income/ costs – Net 141.668m vs. 75.983m +86.447%
H1 Profit before tax 1.693750b vs. 1.563798b +8.310%
H1 Profit for the period 958.198m vs. 717.900m +33.472%
Basic and diluted EPS 1.52 vs. 1.14 +33.333%
Cash and cash equivalents at 30th June [350.293m] vs. [305.940m] +14.497%
No interim dividend

Company Commentary

The Company recorded a growth of 33% in net profit for the half year period.
Net Sales increased by 51% mainly due to increase in international oil prices.
+16% growth in margins
No interim Dividend

Conclusions

Strong Earnings release plain and simple.

Nairobi All Share Bloomberg +25.64% 2017
http://www.BLOOMBERG.COM/quote/NSEASI:IND

167.53 +0.96 +0.58%

Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg +26.44% 2017
http://j.mp/ajuMHJ

4,028.56 +14.85 +0.37%

Every Listed Share can be interrogated here
https://rich.co.ke/rcdata/nsestocks.php