I have noticed that the Total next to my place runs out of stocks quite frequently. It also takes a long time before stocks are replenished. This I have been told is the case in several of their petrol stations. Is every everything okay or did they bite more than they could swallow by buying Caltex?

@mkonomtupu, please translate what you just wrote into English or even Kiswahili if you are so inclined. @Fundamentali, I'm not quite sure how they run their operations but I suspect they have a franchise arrangement and it is possible that your retailer has cash flow problems. The one near my house is never short on ngata. Have they announced Q1 or was I hallucinating as I watched Citizen news the night before last?

thats total for you. they have more market than they need, thus they really do not care much on the retail sector,,, their main focus is large consumers... mteja wa reja reja ni sumbua tupu!!!!

When I bought into KK, I thought this might be a similar deal however, after due diligence, realized this thing is riddled with debt, "not very efficient" managment. They also quietly gave 250m pref shares to the parent company to acquire chevron Kenya which is a loss making entity. I believe they bit off more than they can chew with chevron Kenya. The rebranding hasn't taken effect in alot of stations countrywide.

I also had the opportunity oftalking to a station manager which was previously a caltex station but is now a total and he said it's quite hard dealing with total and their buearacracies( hope I spelt that right :) ) lots of shortages and in general quite tough doing business with total

GG, kisima cha bogal huko isiolo huenda tu kikawa na gasi. This is the official confirmation of one of the most exciting things for anyone in the energy sector. The chinese drilling has found some good pockets of gas which looks promising to be commercially exploited. It also means chances of oil hit in the area is really strong. So for a company like Kengen which is considering a joint venture with daewoo for a gas plant in mombasa that's good news.
In terms of oil exploration that is bringing a lot of cash into oil prospecting. The energy sector is now attracting the top dollars.

As for total, it has always had the liquidity problems(it can always run to the Total group in case of a crunch), the debts are like 14billion, it's bankers though are Citi bank(base rate 10%), it was also the main supplier for the emergency IPP's and kengen thermal after triton collapsed, plus total has to dispose some of the assets from Chevron before the AGM in June. This is what keeping the stock alive. On another note this stock has around 6,000 shareholders only.

I bought stocks into all the energy stocks KK, Total, KPLC and Kengen and mumias and the returns are good.