Kenya’s Stock Market Ranked World’s Worst Performer

Kenyan stocks took a hit in a fourth consecutive decline to September, the longest decline since 2017.

Large-cap stocks like KCB Group took the biggest hit, losing 30 percent during the quarter.

According to Bloomberg, bad loans at the bank have hurt investor confidence.

Kenya’s debt burden has also become a focal point for investors as the country faces skyrocketing energy and food import bills and low foreign-exchange reserves.

So far this year, Kenya’s stock benchmark has lost a quarter of its value, marking the worst performance among country indexes tracked by Bloomberg.

“We expect the equities market to take a hit especially given the rising interest rates environment that we’re in, said Wesley Manambo, a senior associate for research at Nairobi-based Standard Investment Bank Ltd.

In the final week of September, the equities market plummeted, with NASI declining the most by 2.2%, while NSE 25, NSE 10 and NSE 20 fell by 1.5%, 1.4% and 0.8% respectively, taking the YTD performance to losses of 24.0%, 9.3%, and 20.2% for NASI, NSE 20, and NSE 25, respectively.

The market is currently trading at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 4.9x, 60.0% below the historical average of 12.2x.