These are the same chaps who gave a buy recommendation on NBK a loooooong time ago. What was NBK price then and what’s the price now¿ I pity their clients!

..rumor has it..i mean RUMOR..that old mutual "pumped and dumped" kq back in 05-07 from Kshs 16 to 126..leaving guys holding on to a "used scratch card"..

..i said "rumor has it"

..there's principle of investing known as "follow the money"..

If i had, i mean myself and not them..if I had pockets as deep as OM's pocket..sema 200million hivi..i may..i mean me and not them..i may wipe out supply of any stock priced below 10bob at whim..create scarcity on that stock..spark up a price race irregardless of fundamentals.. There's no law that says you cannot buy crap..

..using money to harness and guide greed of those with quite little money..

I learnt..and learnt well..that the Golden rule of investing says.."He who has the gold..makes the rules."

..I care less about Old Mutual's analysis..all i know..their mouth follows their money...while everyone else has their money follow their mouth.. But that's just me.. I'm probably wrong...but the temptation is so real.

#AGM, planned disposal of noncore assets could raise USD 60m (KES 5.1B ) to reduce debt ... if so, this will not conquer the total debt which stood at KES 16.6B in Dec 2012 .... cc@jamani

@guru, noted. thex

Well, reducing it from 16.6bn to 11.5bn is still a huge plus. You don't pay down your loans only in full. It makes sense to pay down what you can when you can to reduce the overall impact of debt costs.

Really? Wow! I had no idea there is a concept of using debt to buy assets. No idea. Zero. Zilch. Sufuri. And to sell these assets at a decent gain to repay debt? Wow! Sacre bleu!

Segman must be the first one to do so and whoever buys assets (inventory, land, buildings, shares, etc) at low(er) prices using debt and then sells them at higher prices must be off his rocker. Now I understand why folks were upset when Williamson took on debt, built Williamson House [sold 50% while it was being built] then cashed in by selling the remaining 50% for 450mn. Crazy! Why go through the hassle to make 300mn in Capital Gains?

Or that Paul Kinuthia chap who borrowed, built up Nice & Lovely [including buildings, machinery, etc] & then sold it off to L'Oreal for a few billions & used part of it to repay his debt. Crazy chap that! He should have stayed small & debt-free ;-) Or the Murayas who borrow from banks to buy assets [land & buildings] then sell them off at higher prices to repay the debt! Crazy is Sue!

*That said, I do not endorse reckless borrowing like KQ has done*

@VVS, and others who attended the AGM or are in the know

(i) What are the non-recurring restructuring expenses that will be incurred this year? Is KK laying off?

(ii) How much is expected to be spent on the restructuring?

(iii) What was said regarding NOCK buying out KK?

(iv) What other striking matters were discussed at the AGM?

@selah you invest in KK without understanding the business. KK borrows to finance inventory and the price of that borrowing is priced in the petrol you bought this week. Surely You don't expect KK to keep 20B in cash to fund inventory which is sold within 45 days do you? Same thing to a bank which borrows our money - as kept in out accounts and lends it to customers. They promptly collect every month and return it/ make it available to us. So should the bank keep 100billion in equity to lend customers ? What KK is doing is generating cash from non productive assets - read stations that don't produce much return compared to the earth they are sitting on in order to reduce long term funding and importantly provide capital to fund opportunities that can produce more. In other words sell Kobil on Koinange coz the land it's siting on is worth many many more times than that petrol station will produce and use the proceeds to fund oil storage facilities in Dar which will produce more money than that land is worth! comprende!! It's called efficient capital allocation and reallocation.

KK let go 80 staff last year and restructuring costs were in last year's ugly P&L.. Frankly speaking I think Segman is among the best CEO's if not the best in this country. He had the balls to admit they erred and what they are doing about it, all this without asking for Capital. Remind me of any CEO on NSE who has admitted as much and provided a road map. All we hear are blames on economy, weather, Europe, politics, mass etc. Meanwhile KQ still hedges after their errors and we don't know what changes were made to the hedging policy. A lot of the capital raisings on the NSE have been to cover up errors by management. KCB has had 2 to cover Triton et all, Co-op was rescued by US Govt and GoK, KQ has had one, Standard Chartered etc...KK made a mistake, admitted and didn't ask for capital!!

Someone has just been misled. .... in point of fact:

1. KK is selling the assets to reduce debt level. Not for investment ABC, Dar, ...

2. KK will incur restructuring cost in 2013

These have been explicitly stated by Segman in his latest update