African Investor Relations

I attended the investor presentation of Edgars on 25 March 2011 and was impressed with their analyst presentation. Key things that I liked:-

• They provided a competitive peer analysis – this is not common for most companies and should be mandatory for each and every company, after all its all about investor choice
• They provided a historical perspective of where volumes are today versus each of the past 8 years – in a post-hyperinflation economy, this is useful, even if only to get a gut feel of where the top end of performance may lie
• They provided insights into their business : segmental trends, monthly trends and evidence that they are in control of the business (eg retrenchments, consolidation of factories)
• They know their stats inside and out and what ratios they are going for – they have aa 40 year history of providing credit in Zimbabwe and are familiar with the Zimbabwean repayment ethic – which is stronger in Zimbabwe than in South Africa
• They have some interesting ideas to grow loyalty in their 111,000 base of credit customers
• Lastly, they provided their key financial targets for 2011

Refreshing open talk from the team at Edgars providing a clear investment message.

The Edgars website is a nice mix between a corporate website and a commercial one and traffic has been strong.

Continue Reading

I am pleased to announce that we have launched the new website of Edgars, a leading Zimbabwean retail fashion company.

Edgars’ core business in Zimbabwe is the retailing of clothing, footwear, textiles and accessories to middle and upper class families. Through their 33 credit and cash stores Edgars supplies customers with value for money by providing quality merchandise for families at competitive prices. Edgars is a market leader in its field and employs upwards of 2500 employees excluding contract and short-term casual labour. David Amira, an equity analyst at Lynton Edwards Securities, an authorised Zimbabwean broking firm says this of Edgars:-

Edgars is one of the country’s leading clothing retailers, with significant market share and brand equity. The re-introduction of credit in the dollarization era has benefitted the company greatly, and as disposable income increases in Zimbabwe, so too will Edgars’ success.

Click here to access the investor relations section of Edgars’ new website and click here to access the main website landing page.  Edgars is due to present its earnings results on Friday 25 March 2011 and so I have not included any historical valuation parameters here, however Edgars’ past year’s share historical share price and volumes traded is shown below:-

Without further ado I invite you to view their new investor relations website and sign up for email alerts:-

A list of brokers trading Edgars’ shares may be accessed here.

Continue Reading

You have signed up to Linkedin.com and it BUGS you that you don’t know what to do next. LinkedIn.com is a powerful executive networking tool that is free (well almost). I recommend it strongly to those executives that seek to extend their company’s influence online (and indeed their own). I have posted a few tips on how to use Linkedin.com below. These are my tips and not necessarily those of Linkedin.com – although they probably overlap.

Here goes:-

• Use it actively and regularly – don’t forget – it takes a long time to build your profile online so start early and do it often.
• Complete your profile 100% on Linkedin
• Put a decent photo of you online. If you are ugly, where a suit and a tie it softens the blow for the reader.
• Import all of your email contacts into Linkedin – see who is also on Linkedin.com too (there’s a little flag) and invite them to join. Do this once every three months – the additional contacts you have met will be added to your Linkedin account
• Go through each contact you have imported and invite each one individually OR send them all an invite at once : not recommended as you will annoy people that you have not spoken to for some time
• Put your Linkedin personal icon image on your website, blog etc and invite people to get in touch
• See what Linkedin.com groups are profiled to your business e.g. African hospitality or hotels or accommodation. Go to the group profile and see the number of members – if there’s 30 members probably not worthwhile joining (unless its specific to you ie that group may be influential in what it does), if there’s 4,000 members its a good source of coverage.
• For every material release of information from your company website, link that, and publish it into the groups you have joined, with your commentary thereon. In Africa many executives join the same groups and this is why its important to join a few big groups and not lots of them.
• Use wording above that is direct and gives the reader a reason why he should read your post – saying “Press release No 43″ is not good. Saying that 40,0oo carats of diamonds are for sale at firesale prices will attract attention…… from the cops.  So make it appropriate to your business and what you do. Keep it short. Use things like “Top 10 tips for hoteliers” or “Give us your favourite hotelier quote” or whatever. Linkedin can be a bit like Facebook, in that every now and then there’s interesting discussions online, tick the box to follow them, actively participate in them and contribute meaningfully – dont waste time.
• Think about whether you want visitors to your Linkedin.com to see all of your contacts and link to them. If your relationships are proprietary then set the setting not to show your contacts to anyone
• Think about whether you could set up your own group online to discuss things relevant to your business and sphere of influence
• Link your website disclosures automatically to appear in your Linkedin.com account and your Twitter and Facebook
• Put your corporate online presentation online under your profile
• Put what books you are reading online. If its the Khama Sutra then thats probably inappropriate (but may attract lots of readers). Put intellectual books online, like War and Peace, Wuthering Heights, The Ascent of Man, Romeo and Juliet. This accentuates your intellectualism. No don’t. Just put online what you are reading.
• Link your blog post to automatically appear in your Linkedin account.
• Regularly update your status – what are you doing on a strategic level.
• Ensure that every press release that is released by your company is published on your profile.
• Do not accept all LinkedIn.com requests – read the profile of the person that you might link with, are they likely to find what you have to say every now and then interesting. And vice versa. Do you really want to like with the person on the other side? For people looking for work bombard them with due diligence info and get them to courier their FULL details to you before you consider them. If they do that they are serious.
• Put your company profile on Linkedin too
• Be aware that having all of your staff online is effectively a HR shopping menu for your competitors – and vice versa.
• Put your Linkedin.com address on your business card

One last thing to bear in mind is to keep your contacts updated with what you are doing – you can only send messages to 50 contacts at a time so its a hassle and it takes time.

Continue Reading

Our message: dont get caught by your website vendor! Here’s the penultimate set of FAQs of this 5 part series on online investor relations in African markets.

We have spent a great amount of money developing our website and would like to build on this?

So you want to spend more? And you have spent a lot already.

Its probably because you are being billed by the hour and your website vendor is slow and you didn’t ask for a fixed fee. “Designing” websites is 10% of what websites should be about. The other 90% is interactivity and content, growing your business and investor base.  Getting bogged down in aesthetics or technicalities can delay online initiatives for months and months. Considering that in Africa it takes some to build online communities can companies afford to delay. Obviously they can.

The message here is think first, long and hard before getting involved in website vendor otherwise you are caught in this circle, you have spent a lot more than expected and need to spend even more to get anywhere. It’s because you signed a time and rate mandate and they don’t understand investor relations.

We are updating our website shortly and might be looking at back frame design work too; how are you affected in your work of setting this up for us?

Back frame design? Phew!

Looking at what other website companies are doing compared to us there’s a lot of technical jargon that I don’t understand. There is no reason for any businessman to get bogged down in technical stuff. If your website vendor is not talking business or investor relations with you (which is why you contracted them) then get another one. Their job is not to discuss technical stuff with you, its to discuss solutions to grow your business and investment profile online. If they don’t then get another one.  So any mention of wire frames etc. (which I would associate with building a chicken-run) get out of there.

Continue Reading

African Sun, a pan-African hospitality business, has released its 2010 annual report in iPaper, the innovative way of presenting annual reports online. The advantage to investors in African markets is ease of access, and avoiding the need to download a 7meg or 75meg (as in some Nigerian annual reports) annual report. Another advantage is that previous annual reports can be searched simultaneously with the current 2010 and the attractive flip format online can be placed on a USB and handed out to investors  saving trees in the process.

African Sun’s growing pan-African profile is looking good and they know their business and business model inside-out (as one should). Their disclosure is complete and transparent in analyst presentations and their CEO, Shingi Munyeza is an eloquent speaker. Shingi is a well known personality in hospitality circles in Africa and his blog, Shingi’s Blog, shares additional insights into the business.

African regulators have yet to adopt the “Green route” in reporting allowing listed companies to report electronically. Don’t expect it sometime soon either. Kenya has come the closest by dropping the requirement to send annual reports altogether (and replacing this with no obligation to do anything else). Yes trees are saved but is Kenyan corporate governance?

Anyway enjoy African Sun’s annual report. It’s always done well and is a pleasure to read online in iPaper.

African Sun Limited 2010 annual report

Continue Reading

Matamba Anonaka Technology Holdings (MATHs), the first technology focused Venture Capital Company in Zimbabwe, was established in 2010 with the purpose of investing in and taking early advantage of the opportunities in Zimbabwe’s pre‐emerging Technology Sector.

Former Celsys Limited and Lonzim Plc executive and CEO of the Company, Mr Geoff Goss, who will be participating on the Telecoms panel at the conference, has been instrumental in the creation of the Company and the identification and development of the numerous projects and subsidiaries that Matamba Anonaka is involved in.

“Having spent the last 10 months assembling a world class leadership team and identifying the primary companies and projects which we are interested in, we felt the time was now right to introduce those projects to a much wider investing audience.” said Goss.

“The opportunity to contribute to the EuroMoney Zimbabwe Investment Conference has therefore come at a very good time for us and we are looking forward to being part of an exceptional event, run by an exceptional Company.”

He continued, ”It is also therefore an opportune time for us to establish a web presence that reaches all corners of the earth, as part our strategy to attract interest from the more speculative, pre-emerging frontier investment community.” The first phase of the MATHs website goes live on March 8 2011 and will be regularly updated and evolved in line with the development of the Company.Commented Goss, ”As a Technology focused Company it is of primary importance to us that we use and benefit from the tools of the trade. To this end we have had to be very selective about who we appointed to manage this aspect of our business, and it is a matter of great pride and importance to us that in Big Law, we have found a Zimbabwean service provider whose standards of professionalism and quality of work would be hard to beat in any market in the world.”

ends.

For further information please contact:
MATHs – info@matambaanonaka.com

Continue Reading

Many listed subsidiaries of listed holding companies lag their local peers in delivering shareholder information and proxy materials online to their shareholders. BAT Zambia is one example of many companies that are not connecting with their local investors online. This is inconsistent with their local peers, many of whom realise that corporate reputation needs to be promoted in all channels. For a listed subsidiary of a listed holding company its global brand that’s the issue. I have yet to get to the bottom of why this is the case.

BAT’s case is not unusual and you would expect it to be. So will the CEOs of Barclays PLC, Unilever PLC, SAB Miller PLC, Standard Chartered PLC, BAT PLC, and others please drop me a line to discuss this. Much appreciated! Of course if you are in town PLEASE pop in for a coffee. Of the +/- 475 companies in 11 sub-saharan African markets over 100 are listed subsidiaries of listed holding companies – a significant chunk. I am looking forward to the time when a multi-national takes its local investors seriously (as a PR initiative!) and apply international standards of disclosure and information dissemination to local markets. They say they set the trends in other governance areas (and boast about it), why not online IR?

Anyway here’s BAT Zambia’s results:-

Closing text here…

Continue Reading

Zimbabwe is so interesting at the moment. The political side of things appears to be as shaky as ever but growth of the US$’s power in the economy is becoming more apparent. The telecoms sector is evidence of this.  As are other consumer sectors. Our newly launched client, Turnall Holdings held their analyst presentation yesterday. Profit more than doubled and they are declaring a dividend.

Turnalls products are strong, well known and they have a good business model.  Visit their investor relations website here.

Continue Reading