Busy IPO season beckons for Cairo as reforms yield results - Bloomberg

CAIRO - 16 October 2017: Egypt's stock market is shaping up to be the Middle East's hot spot for initial public offerings next year, Bloomberg said in a report Monday.

Share trading has almost doubled, averaging 1.1 billion pounds a day in the 12 months ended Oct. 10, compared with 540 million pounds a year earlier, data compiled by Bloomberg show. And foreigners have returned, their net buying of stocks tripling to $497.3 million in the fiscal year to June 30, the report read.

The prospects for further IPOs look promising, said Mohamed Farid, the chairman of the Egyptian Exchange. "We have plenty of requests from various companies of various sizes to list and partially float. Also there is plenty of traction when it comes to companies asking for listing requirements and trying to comply with them."

Two of the six IPOs planned for the coming months involve state-owned businesses: Engineering for the Petroleum & Process Industries and Banque Du Caire SAE.

They're part of a government plan announced last year to raise as much as $10 billion from share offerings. Better progress on that plan would attract bigger companies to market, generating greater foreign interest and higher trading volumes, Salah Shamma, Franklin Templeton Investments' head of Middle East and North African equities, said in an interview.

"Egypt is one of the busier markets in the region," EFG-Hermes' Strategist Simon Kitchen. "Appetite for broader emerging market IPOs should remain robust in 2018, with Egypt in line for a bigger piece of the pie following the currency float."