Good morning and welcome to this week’s edition of Bulls and Bears, my weekly thread on the NGX and US equity space.

 If you have any questions, you can drop a comment or send an email to info@greentickertales.com. Please like/share/retweet. 

A big thank you to everyone who showed up for the bulls and bears monthly webinar. The slides will be shared before the day runs out. Next webinar will be on the 28th of December. 

Last week on the NGX

Starting with the NGX and probably what would be the biggest story this week. 

Lafarge Africa  in a notice sent in yesterday following an emergency board meeting informed the NGX and other shareholders that Holcim Group, its majority shareholder, had reached an agreement with Huaxin Cement to sell its holdings to them. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in 2025. 

Purchase price is $1billion and rough maths comes to circa N120 per share. 

I will be doing a standalone piece on the deal later in the week, as it see Holcim also has a stake in Huaxin. 

The NGX All Share Index declined by 0.33%. Sunu Assurances led the gainers appreciating by 23.42% to close at N3.90.

Austin Laz led the losers declining by 26.32% to close at N1.96.

Access Bank Plc  has completed the acquisition of Standard Chartered Bank Angola S.A and Standard Chartered Bank (Sierra Leone] Limited.

The parties are working on the completion of transactions that would see Access Bank acquire Standard Chartered Bank’s subsidiaries in Cameroon, the Gambia and its Consumer, Private and Business Banking business in Tanzani

Japaul Gold and Ventures Plc has signed Sand Mining Contract with Gravitas Investment Limited for the purpose of mining 3,500,000 cubic meters of sand for reclamation of Swamps and Lagoon at Gracefield Island (end of Chevron Drive), Lekki, Lagos State. The contract worth is N26billion, and the Project is to be completed within 26 months.

To earnings 

Ellah Lakes, Cutix and Nigerian Enamelware dropped earnings last week 

Ellah Lakes recorded a N260 million loss for the first quarter ended October 2024. Same period last year, it had a N149 million loss after tax

Cutix had a 13.7% increase in profit after tax for the half year ended October. Profit after tax went up from N452 million in 2023 to N514 million in 2024. 

Nigerian enamelware recorded a N100 million profit for the half year ended October 2024, as against a N106 million for the same period in 2023. 

Board and management changes

Timothy John Fearnhead will resign as the Chairman of the NewGold Issuer (RF) Limited Board with effect from 30 November 2024. He will retain his position as an Independent NonExecutive Director on the board and his position as a member of the NewGold Issuer Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee (ARCC).

 Luyolo Poswa was appointed as the Chairman with effect from 1 December 2024. 

NAICOM has approved the appointment of Olayimika Phillips an independent non executive director on the board of Linkage Assurance 

Insider dealings

A couple of insider dealing notices dropped during the week.

Most significant by size were Fidelity Bank MD Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe dropping  over N350 million for the bank’s shares a few weeks back and United Capital Deputy Group CEO dropping over N102 million on the company’s shares. 

PZ Cussons and Eunisell Interlinked held their AGMs last week. 

What’s happening this week on the NGX? 

December 5th the NGX Group will be having its Made of Africa awards. 

Moving on to the US 

The S&P (SP500) gained 1.1%.

 The Nasdaq Composite  added +1.1%.

 The Dow (DJI) gained +1.4%.

This week is a fairly busy week in terms of earnings

From the tech space, Okta and Zscaler will drop their earnings. 

Lululemon and Ulta Beauty will also drop theirs this week

You can get more details here

That’s it for this week. Have a great week ahead. 

This thread is up as a post on my substack. A more comprehensive version will go up on greentickertales.com by 10am.

Have a great trading week ahead. END.