@hisah. You were right about the liquidity squeeze or foreign fluctuations affecting companies. Interestingly the only thing I few in arm are debt levels, convertible bonds whatever and off course valuation. Otherwise awesome company. Unlike KQ they will bounce back. Even maybe before end year

Things are thick na bado

Agree with @Aguytrying. Operating profit is up 7.0% YOY. EBITDA is up 9.0%. They'll get past this. It's a glitch. 5 year CAGR is 6.8%.Look at the trends: http://kenyainvestor.com.../arm-cement/financials/

In most African countries, borrowing in USD (or even borrowing in LCY at very high rates) & selling in LCY is a disaster. As a country (Kenya) or region (EAC) or continent (Africa), we should dollars our economies. We need Fiscal discipline that is imposed on us and perhaps a Monetary Policy that we have little control over.

Some may look at it as neocolonialism but I see it as 'discipline' that is imposed on us OR we might just end up like Venezuela or Argentina (under the Peso).

Kenya issued a USD Eurobond. The KES got an artificial boost and when the euphoria ran out, the bill has come due. A 6% USD bond is now 16% when re-calculated in LCY.

I need help researching which country had the cash-in cash-out policy. My poor googling skills aren't helping.

I can't recall which country did it but they had moved to a cash accounting system for a little while i.e. books were balanced DAILY. If the Treasury had $10mn then it wrote cheques for $10mn. Everyone queued up for payment which also meant increased scrutiny for payments.

Therefore, Things of Desire would line up with a genuine supplier e.g. KenolKobil to be paid. All the payments would be listed and can be challenged by those in the queue.

Shady firms or deals would be shunted aside pending verification or sent to the back of the queue. Cash in, cash out. What happened was that inflation dropped like a rock as there was no printing of money. The economy did suffer a slow-down but I looked at it positively that there was genuine growth not inflationary filed growth.

Almost sounds like what Egypt is doing now to clamp down on black mkt dollar sales... For a company to buy USD, there's a queue which could be upto a month, and there's a restriction on depositing USD to 10K per day, max 50K per month (Previously, one would buy form black mkt, depo and remit the USD). But black mkts are the result of a super-restricted market.
What we have in Kenya is a structural issue, where the inflows (that are supposed to repay the loans) are not enough.. tourism inflows have dwindled, and the import bill is huge, esp with the current infrastructural projects that will gobble up USD's.

Panic selling (fund raising)??
Consolidating (Cash parking)??
Smart money (Accumulating / entry)??

.

AKS thinks the price will go up 4 fold

Pay for play. KQ, Safaricom, ARM, KCB, you name it.