After going through a brief period of uncertainty as to the future of the country’s leadership and who would become its next prime minister, investors in the Jamaican stock Market were able to make concrete decisions – with the outcome of Jamaica’s national elections finally complete on February 25, 2016. The then opposition, Jamaica Labour Party was successful in coming to power, renewing hopes that the Junior stock market would again see new life as one of their campaign promises was to retain the benefits of the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange, which currently allows companies to list and pay no taxes for 5 years as long as they remain listed for 15 years.

Despite their ascendance to power, some companies were already making plans to list before the original cut-off time of March 31, 2016and decided that they would push through none-the-less. As a result we saw a few listings in the last month of its existence, before the removal of the benefits in their current state. IronRock Insurance (a startup general insurance company), lead by Mayberry Investments Ltd launched their IPO in the dead-heat of the elections, and this was followed a few days later by the offering for Jetcon, Jamaica’s first automotive listing (with lead brokers being JMMB securities Ltd). Not to be left out was the 9 year old primarily- unsecured loans issuing company ISP Finance Services Ltd (by Victoria Mutual Wealth Management Ltd); and coming in on the nick of time with its March 29th IPO was 30 year old general insurer Key Insurance company Ltd (also by JMMB Securities Ltd).

These 4 offerings were all heavily oversubscribed and continue to signal the overwhelming demand for aggressive investing options by the public. The companies were seeking to raise the following amounts
• Jetcon Corporation Ltd – $95.7m
• ISP Finance Services Ltd – $98.0m
• Key Insurance Company Ltd – $119.0m to $250.9m
• IronRock Insurance – $315.0m
In at least 2 cases (IronRock and Key Insurance), the lead brokers have decided to purchase a 20% stake of the companies.

Despite the rush of new listings, March has been one of the less impressive months on the JSE and on the Junior market, with investors either seeming to take their profits from gains over the last few months or maintaining a wait-and-see mood with a change of government.

RJR (Radio Jamaica), JAMT (Jamaican Teas), SVL (Supreme Ventures), BRG (Berger Paints), SEP (Seprod) and CWJ (Cable & Wireless) were all down more than 20% during the month with the largest decliner RJR down 64%. RJR is currently in the final stages of merger with GLNR which is also down 9.1% in March but up 60.8% since January 2016.

Continued Growth in Barbados
During March over BB$6.0 million was traded on the Barbados Stock Exchange with BB$4.0m traded in BHL (Banks Holdings Ltd), BB$975.0k in OCM (One Caribbean Media) and almost another million split between ICBL (Insurance Corporation of Barbados Ltd), FCI (First Caribbean International) and SFC (Sagicor Financial Corporation). On the Barbados stock exchange, market capitalization (the value of the market in BB$) increased by BB$203.0 million since the start of March, over the BB$6.1 billion valuation at the start of February.

Trinidad & Tobago
11 stocks advanced on the TTSE in March with 5 going up more than 4% over the month. The big 3 advancers were Grace Kennedy (GKC), National Flour Mills (NFM) and First Caribbean (FCI) and all 3 were up more than 10% for the month. Interestingly, on a year-to-date basis since the start of 2016 GKC and FCI are both up 28.4% and 29.7% respectively while NFM is down 25.9% (even with its 11% increase in March).

17 securities were down since the start of March and as at the date of this writing (March 25th) , with the biggest decliners being NEL (down 37.8% for March, 45.1% YTD), TCL (down 7.7% in March, 9.8% YTD), MASSY (down 6.8% in March, 10.5% YTD) andRML (down 5.8% in March and YTD).

Cross Listed Stocks
It is also interesting to note that for two of the cross-listed stocks Grace Kennedy and JMMBGL both for the month in review and also on a year-to-date basis
• Grace Kennedy was up 10.4% on the TTSE and down 1.9% on the JSE for March. On a year-to-date basis they were up 28.4% on the TTSE and but only 1.5% on the JSE.
• JMMBGL was down on both the TTSE and JSE for March – 1.67% and 13.5% respectively. The stock is however up by 7.27% on the TTSE since January 2016 while it is down by 2.72% on the JSE over the same period.

By Stephen Wildes