Stock Market

Oil Price Rebound Fails to Cheer GCC Markets

Blue Chips were mixed in August with DP World and Ooredoo gaining 8.8 percent and 8.1 percent respectively. Four of the top five gainers were from Qatar, with Qatar National Bank and Industries Qatar share prices up by 7.5 percent and 6.1 percent respectively. Investors flooded their investments into Qatari large caps after the announcement of FTSE to include them into the emerging markets index on 24th August 2016. Saudi stocks were at the bottom, National commercial bank (NCB) and...

Flat July for GCC Markets

Blue chips drove Qatar’s index surge, with real estate (8.52%), telecoms (7.94%) and banking stocks (7.1%) performing well in July. The recently announced Qatar’s fuel subsidy reform will also help shrink its budget deficit by reducing expenditures; a move that will help investments in private sector. Saudi index fell due to fall in oil price, and the continued resilience of shale oil, as increasingly efficient US shale production continues to drive a wedge in OPEC’s strategy of flooding the market...

Revealed: The 30 most valuable non-banking companies in GCC

ROE is one of the important parameters that is used to evaluate the strength of the company as well as the return the company generates for the equity holders. ROE is also a measure of efficiency of functioning of the company. Debt to equity (D/E) indicates the leverage and thereby the risk the company faces due to its capital structure. As D/E ratio is a comparative measure, we have ranked the companies based on the measure to indicate companies that...

MENA Markets Mixed, Oil Flat Post – Brexit

S&P GCC rose marginally by 1.1% in June, to close at 91 points. Global investor reaction to the Brexit outcome had unnerved GCC investors, and speculation over a possible contagion in Europe had led to panic driven trading in the last two weeks of June. Investors have become more risk averse as uncertainty continues to plague global markets. In terms of valuation, P/E of Morocco (16.8x), Jordan (14.2x) and Kuwait (13.5x) markets were the premium markets in the MENA region,...

Potential Impact of Capital Market Reforms in Saudi Arabia

The Tadawul All Share Index plans to increase the listings to 250 companies from about 170 now, over the next seven years. Its current market capitalization of $396 billion is expected to add close to $ 120-130 bn post the IPO of Aramco and possible inclusion into the MSCI emerging market index by Mid-2017. The aim of the government is to increase the size of Saudi Arabia’s stock market to match that of its GDP within seven years (2014 -$798...

MENA Markets Break its Correlation to Oil

S&P GCC also declined by 5.1% in May, to close at 90 points. Worries over contraction in the construction industry and possibility of rise in provisions and non-performing loans in regional banks made investors wary of taking long-term positions in banking and construction shares, despite positive Q1 results for the former. MENA markets liquidity had a negative month, with volumes decreasing by 32% and value traded falling by 7%. Morocco and Bahrain witnessed increases in both volume and value traded,...

Brent’s record rise sustains MENA momentum

Gulf markets have been gaining for the past couple of months, on the back of strong oil market performance, with the belief that the oil price movements have turned a corner. Investor focus has now shifted to the corporate earnings that are affected by the austerity measures, which were undertaken due to low oil prices. The TASI index performance was largely due to companies beating their first-quarter earnings estimates, as well as the surge in oil prices. The combined net...

These stocks in UAE and Saudi Arabia still trade above 5-year PE despite market fall

According to an analysis by Marmore MENA Intelligence (www.marmoremena.com), a research house specialized in MENA economies and business issues with the focus on providing actionable solutions, out of a total of 121 UAE-listed stocks (comprising of ADX’s 65, Nasdaq Dubai&rsquo's 5 and DFM’s 52), 12 stocks are trading at multiples that are higher than their 5-year average PE multiples, which includes stocks such as Etisalat, du, Aramex, Commercial Bank of Dubai and RAK ceramics, among others. Likewise, out of 173...

GCC stock markets: Where is the research?

Compared to most developed and emerging markets, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s stock markets suffer from poor research coverage.   The four largest GCC equity markets together enjoy less than a third of the research coverage of other regions, with that available often restricted to large stocks, leaving mid-cap and small-cap stocks mostly ignored from the spectrum.   In the GCC, the major producers of research are a handful of domestic banks and investment houses, which have research as an auxiliary...

MENA Markets March on Oil Rise

Egypt’s stocks rose in March, as the country’s central bank devalued its currency and stated that it would adopt a more flexible exchange-rate policy, to ease an acute dollar shortage that is hurting the economy. The devaluation, along with other measures, made stocks cheaper for both domestic and foreign investors, who went on a purchasing binge. The exchange closed the month at 687 points, up from 560 points in February, in what has been the single largest monthly gain in...