Buyers outpace sellers on the ZSE

Business
The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) edged up further during the week ended May 17 2019, as buyers continued to outpace sellers. Total market capitalisation ended the week at $19,038.30 million, a 2.65% rise from last week’s $18,546.16 million.

By Fungai Nyaungwa

The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) edged up further during the week ended May 17 2019, as buyers continued to outpace sellers. Total market capitalisation ended the week at $19,038.30 million, a 2.65% rise from last week’s $18,546.16 million. All equity gauges were in the black: the All Share Index and the Industrial Index gained 2.85% and 2.87% to close the week at 145.65 points and 486.76 points respectively.

The Top 10 Index ended the week at 137.50 points, a 2.14% increase from last week. Mining counters were 0.13% higher at 189.63 on the back of a slight gain in Bindura Nickel Corporation, up 0.50% with RioZim remaining unchanged this week.

Rainbow Tourism Group led the risers, gaining 50.00% to close the week at $0.0602 possibly due to the rush to take advantage of the outstanding hard currency dividend. MedTech Holdings was another top riser, inching up 36.84% to close the week at $0.0026 after recording a profit in their annual results released during the week. Getbucks Microfinance Bank Limited and Proplastics both saw significant gains of 20.00% to close at $0.0960 and $0.2800 respectively. Losses were seen in First Mutual Properties, Lafarge Cement Zimbabwe, Powerspeed Electrical, Unifreight and First Mutual Holdings down 13.85%, 12.93%, 11.01%, 8.09% and 4.41% respectively.

Among the heavyweights, Delta which started off the week at a price of $2.8733, rose 2.66% to close the week at $2.9496 with total shares of 2,698,353 worth $7,940,984 being traded. Econet Wirelesss Zimbabwe, Cassava Smartech and Innscor declined 0.09%, 0.24% and 0.10% respectively. Fungible counter Old Mutual closed the week 17.39% higher at $12.2106, with 906,937 shares trading hands. The Old Mutual Implied Rate closed the week at 7.4119 up from 6.4248 last week. Another fungible counter PPC, advanced 13.14% to $1.7000 with trades of 34,480 shares. We continue to see buyer interest in the heavyweight counters such as Econet Wirelesss Zimbabwe and Cassava Smartech which are yet to release their results. We believe demand in these two counters and Old Mutual will continue to push prices upwards in the new week ahead.

Volumes activity was largely dominated by Getbucks Microfinnce (63%), Econet Wireless Zimbabwe (10%) and Cassava Smartech (5%). A total of 78,837,346 shares changed hands, an increase from the 14,597,566 recorded during the previous week. Total turnover was 31.30% higher at $38,529,070, up from $29,343,455 last week. Turnover was largely driven by trades in Old Mutual which contributed 27.81% to total turnover, followed by Econet Wireless Zimbabwe (21.11%) and Delta Corporation (20.61%). —Akribos