STOCKBROKERS Zambia Limited says there has been no radical economic shift as the capital market remains stable in the transition period.
Meanwhile, Lusaka Stock Exchange (LuSE) last week recorded a 15.27 percent gain with the turnover standing at K9.2 million.
Stockbrokers Zambia Limited chief executive officer Chanda Mutoni said the outcome of the January 20 election is unlikely to pose radical economic shifts resulting in continued stability in the capital market.
“We are confident that economic fundamentals will remain strong, policy-wise, we do not expect any radical shifts regardless of the outcome of the election. We expect a stable and smooth transition.
“We ushered in a new Government in 2011 but essentially, there was no radical shift policy-wise and we expect it to be the case this time around,” Mr Mutoni said in an interview on Monday.
Giving an overview of the capital market in 2014, he said the sector has performed well citing Lafarge Cement and ZCCM-Investment Holding (IH) as major contributors to the market recording historic transactions.
“We recorded large transactions this year with Lafarge Cement being the largest at US$60 million, the Lafarge transaction alone equalled the turnover of 2013.The ZCCM- IH debt restructuring of over US$400 million largest debt restructuring at the time out of which about US$50 to 60 million was new money raised,” he said.
The market also witnessed a new entrant, Madison Financial Services Plc, raking in about US$12 million while Zambia Sugar began its free-float compliance, which represents the portion of shares of a corporation that are in the hands of public investors as opposed to locked-in stock held by promoters, company officers, controlling-interest investors, or Government. The company raised about US$20 million.
In a separate interview, Stockbrokers Zambia Limited financial analyst Tapiwa Msusa said the market last week recorded about 15.5 percent growth, beating countries like Ghana, which recorded about 8.3 percent.
A total of 2.6 million shares were traded with a turnover of K9.2 million.
The major players included Bata Zambia at 163 percent; ZCCM-IH was at 134 percent and Zambia Breweries at 65.08 percent.
Trades were also recorded in Lafarge at 43.90 percent, Real Estate Zambia at 25 percent and British American Tobacco at 21.05 percent.
Others were Airtel at 19.64 while National Breweries and Madison Financial Services were 18.23 and 12.90 percent, respectively.
However, the commercial banks generally underperformed with Zanaco Bank shares declining by 6.67 percent, Standard Chartered Bank by 0.52 percentage point while Investrust Bank did not record any trading.
Source: Daily Mail