Opinion

Election season's end gives surging Kenyan stocks more room to run

Word count: 557

In the early days of 2017, Kenyan stocks were trading near their lowest valuations in years. At that time, 27 of the 66 companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) had grown their earnings at an average rate of more than 10% during the preceding five years, and 16 of them had grown in excess of 15%. But despite this broad-based growth, the market as a whole traded at a price-to-earnings ratio of just 12.7 and sported an average dividend yield of 6.3%. Nearly half of all listed firms (29 to be exact) traded at a discount to their net asset values.