BSE to continue listings charm offensive
Brian Benza | Wednesday April 6, 2016 14:04
According to a statement from the BSE, follow up workshops and one-on-ones will be held with private unlisted companies twice this year in order to further educate entrepreneurs on listing.
“These will entail an incubation programme in order to avail to private unlisted companies an ecosystem of advisors involved in preparing a company for listing.
“This ecosystem will also include CEOs of listed companies that can serve as mentors to entrepreneurs in unlisted private companies.
“The conference and the one-on-ones are expected to lead to an increase in the number of listings in the long run thus increasing liquidity in the BSE,” said BSE chief executive officer, Thapelo Tsheole.
In a bid to sustain the growth momentum, the BSE successfully held its Inaugural Listings Conference last month whose overall aim was to open up the BSE to the business community and bring together the BSE, private companies with the potential to list.
Over 130 small, medium and large enterprises that are not listed but having the potential to in the short, medium to long-term attended the conference. Meanwhile, despite an increase in the turnover in the first quarter of the year, the mainstream Domestic Companies Index (DCI) ended weaker on profit taking.
In the first three months of the year, the DCI depreciated by 3.8 percent in comparison to an appreciation of 2 percent in the same period in 2015. The decline, however, came in a period where the number of shares traded was higher than in the comparative period last year.
As March 31, 2016, the BSE had recorded a turnover of P702.2 million from a volume of 187.1 million shares traded.
During the same period in 2015, the BSE had registered a turnover of P557.8 million and a total volume of 154.7 million shares traded.
“Turnover was highly stable in 2016 relative to the previous four years. This is augmented by the lowest coefficient of variation of turnover of 1.3 in 2016 in comparison to 1.8 and 2.4 in 2015 and 2014, respectively,” read the statement.
The top 5 trade companies in terms of value were Letshego (P339.1 million), Sefalana (P91.3 million), Choppies (P65.4 million), BIHL (P58.1 million) and FNBB (P41.7 million). The top five counters accounted for 84.8 percent of the total turnover during the quarter. In the period, the Foreign Company Index (FCI) registered an increase of 0.4 percent relative to a marginal depreciation of 0.4 percent over the same period in 2015.