The initial public offering of e-finance for Digital and Financial Investments is expected to be the largest offering Egypt has witnessed in years

Newsletter

19 Oct 2021

For our top EGX & companies talks today, the initial public offering (IPO) of e-finance for Digital and Financial Investments (EFIH) is expected to be the largest offering Egypt has witnessed in years. Foreign fund managers likely made up nearly 70% of demand for the offering to institutional investors. Trading on e-finance’s shares will begin on Wednesday, October 20th, opening at 13.98 EGP per share, adding that the IPO values at around 5.8 billion EGP (367 million USD). On Sunday, the EGX announced that the public offering of e-finance was oversubscribed by almost 61.36x, with total purchase orders placed on 1.581 billion shares. (Source: EGX)

More about our new startup company, SYMPL intends to reach 200 merchants with its contracts in the first half of 2022, as part of its efforts to expand its services in the local market.
The platform's mission is to conduct an electronic link between the merchant - the service provider or the commodity - and the customer wishing to obtain it, in order to provide a postponed payment process for the service obtained by the customer, with various payment periods of up to 5 months, without any interest. The value of a purchase m made by the customer starts from 300 EGP and up to 30,000 EGP. It is noteworthy that the “SYMPL” platform has established major partnerships with a number of major retailers of multiple categories of products and services, including Trade Line, the authorized sales agent of Apple for Apple products in Egypt.
In addition, the company’s model is different from the consumer finance companies operating in the local market, as it is not based on dealing with and studying customers for the purpose of financing,
but rather runs a technological system that allows the merchant to offer payment services later to his customers when paying with bank cards and in accordance with his sales stimulus policy. It is worth noting that the platform comes as an advanced payment experience model, and instead of promoting purchases, the platform gives customers many options when paying and helps customers to save, flexible management of cash flows and achieve a better balance between income and expenses, without compromising the lifestyle.
Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt (FAIT) reported a 27.2% year-on-year increase in standalone net profit for the first nine months of 2021.
The bank’s standalone net profit after tax stood at 1.68 billion EGP in the January-September period of 2021, up from 1.32 billion EGP in the prior-year period. It is worth noting that the bank achieved a standalone net profit of 1.015 billion EGP in H1 2021, up from profits of 791.63 million EGP in the prior-year period. Also, Heliopolis Company for Housing and Development achieved net profits of EGP 180.15 million in fiscal year (FY) 2020/2021, down by 50.7% year-on-year (YoY) from 365.55 million EGP. The revenues declined to 574.18 million EGP in the year ended 30 June from 1.099 billion EGP a year earlier. (Source: EGX)
Equally important Aspire Capital Holding for Financial Investments, formerly known as Pioneers Holding Company for Financial Investment, announced the completion of the establishment of a micro-finance company.
The new firm will have an issued capital of 120 million EGP and a paid-up capital of 30 million EGP. It will start its operations upon the issuance of the required licences from the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA). Previously, the EGX listing committee approved a request to reduce the authorized capital of Pioneers Holding Company for Financial Investment to 1 billion EGP from 10 billion EGP and the issued capital to 210.96 million EGP from 5.27 billion EGP. It also approved changing the company's name to Aspire Capital Holding for Financial Investments. (Source: Arab Finance)
Moreover, the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) has signed a contract with Elsewedy Electric for Trading and Distribution, a subsidiary of Elsewedy Electric Co., to build a substation in Sheikh Zayed for the monorail project.
The 178 million EGP contract includes the establishment of a gas-insulated substation (GIS) with a capacity of 66/22 kilovolt (kV) to supply the Sixth of October monorail with electricity. The project, which will be implemented over a period of 12 months, will be financed by the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Resources. (Source: Arab Finance)
Furthermore, yesterday, the EGX celebrates the start of trading in the shares of Emerald Development and Project Management, especially as it is the first offering received by the small and medium stock market in conjunction with the offering plan.
The company offered about 10.5% of its shares, equivalent to 45 million shares, of which 35% were public offerings to the public, and 65% were private offerings to individuals and institutions of high net worth. The capital of Emerald Development and Project Management is about 85 million pounds, distributed over 425 million shares. (Source: Arab Finance).
Also, seven local companies submitted their technical and financial offers to compete for the largest exercise offered to local companies to supply electrical cables with quantities exceeding 1,000 kilometers of medium voltage.
The seven companies that applied for the practice include: Giza Power, International Cables, Misr Cables, EGEMAC and Giza Cables, in addition to two other companies did not disclose them. It is worth mentioning that this practice is the largest since the beginning of the fiscal year 2021/2022 due to the expansions implemented by the electricity distribution companies at the level of the Republic through their investment plans, “dignified life” projects and other nation-state projects in various sectors. (Source: Al-Mal.)
Moving to our macro watch, first, foreign investment in the Egyptian oil sector dropped by 26.02% year-on-year in fiscal year (FY) 2020/2021.
These investments recorded 5.4 billion USD in FY 2020/2021, compared to 7.3 billion USD in FY 2019/2020. The coronavirus crisis led to a slowdown in investments from international oil companies worldwide. It is worth noting that the CBE announced that oil trade balance deficit improved to 6.7 million USD, compared to 421 million USD in FY 2019/2020, as oil exports grew to 8.6 billion USD and oil imports declined to 8.6 billion USD. (Source: Reuters)
Second, remittances from Egyptians working abroad during the period January-July 2021 increased by 10.2%, at a value of 1.7 billion USD, to record about 18.7 billion USD, compared to about 17.0 billion USD during the period January-July 2020.
While remittances for the month of July 2021 decreased by a slight rate of 3.0%, to record about 2.79 billion USD, compared to about 2.88 billion USD during July 2021. The Egyptian economy’s transactions with the outside world during the fiscal year 2020/2021 achieved a surplus of about 1.9 billion USD, compared to a deficit of 8.6 billion USD during the previous fiscal year 2019/2020, affected by the Corona pandemic. The CBE revealed that this total surplus was achieved despite the current account deficit rising to about 18.4 billion USD during 2020/2021, compared to 11.2 billion USD during the previous fiscal year. (Source: CBE)
And finally, for our macro talks abrad, we need to mention that China's economy posted its slowest pace of growth in a year in the third quarter, hit by power shortages, supply chain bottlenecks, major fluctuations in the real estate market and increasing pressure on policy makers to do more to support a faltering recovery.
The data showed GDP growth of 4.9% in the July-September period from its previous level, in the weakest performance since the third quarter of 2020, and contrary to expectation. The world's second largest economy faces several major challenges including China's Evergrande Group debt crisis, ongoing supply chain delays and a grinding electricity crisis, which has reduced factory production to the weakest level since early 2020, when heavy COVID-19 restrictions were in place. (Source: Bloomberg)