Arqaam Capital’s First Egypt Investor Conference in Cape Town
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Arqaam Capital, the specialist emerging and frontier markets
investment bank, announces its first Egypt Investor Conference in
Cape Town on 22-23 January at the Vineyard Hotel against the
backdrop of an unprecedented level of change and structural reforms
undertaken by the Egyptian government to ensure the long-term
health of its economy, attract foreign investments and spur
growth.
Radi El-Helw, Managing Director and Head of the Egypt office at
Arqaam Capital, said: "We expect inflation to drop progressively
over the coming months, reducing year on year inflation to as low
as 13-14% by the middle of the year, which should allow the central
bank to gradually reduce monetary policy rates. GDP growth is
already rising, as corporates and consumers adapt to higher prices,
the FX overhang has been lifted and services growth continues. Real
GDP growth should accelerate to 5% in 2018, 5.5% in 2019 and 6.2%
in 2020, above its long-term average."
Wafic Nsouli, Managing Director and Head of Equities at Arqaam
Capital, commented: "The recovery will continue in 2018, several
rate cuts should be positive for indebted companies and boost capex
towards the end of this year. Currently investment climate
indicators are still low, regulatory and bureaucratic reform are
still lagging and exports are mostly rising on the back of
previously unutilized capacities and limited opportunities to
expand, with a need to tap new markets and exploit the full
potential of existing ones. Stock valuations in Egypt still offer
significant scope for further improvement as expectations for the
next few years have been set too low especially for industrials and
consumer stocks, while banks are more immune to the rate cycle than
consensus anticipates, as they de-dollarize their balance sheets,
improve their liability mix, increase loan-to-deposit ratios and
are generally well matched for interest rate changes."
"We also expect Egypt to continue to be a part of the MSCI
Emerging Markets Index despite some concerns following the drop in
the number of constituents to two stocks that meet the normal
criteria, below the minimum three, given the healthy IPO pipeline
that will provide new index constituents, as well as some changes
in the market that are resulting in more stocks become eligible for
index inclusion, most recently Eastern Tobacco", he added.
Over the two days of the conference, Arqaam Capital will bring
together the senior management teams of 23 listed companies from
Egypt and more than 25 South Africa based investors for a series of
high-value one-on-one and small group meetings. Participating
companies are drawn from a wide array of sectors including
financial services, telecommunications, industrials, utilities,
materials, real estate and hospitality and healthcare and have a
combined market capitalization of 20 billion dollars.