Assertion Not checkable as stated
Miah: African public equities trade at 8x earnings while privates cost 8x sales
“So the valuations PE, you're paying eight times. On the private side, you're paying price to sales eight times for the similar exposure.”
Insight
Miah: African telecoms are the holy grail of voice, data, and mobile money
“Telecoms in Africa in many ways is the holy grail for telecom investors. Why? Because you still have voice growing at eight, nine, 10%. So voice is still high single digit growth. You have data growing at 20%. And then you have this unique component, which is …”
Opinion
Miah: Africa is currently the most exciting emerging market for investment
“The Middle East where I was based is still predominantly emerging market in terms of trades, and obviously Africa is probably the most exciting emerging marketplace for us.”
Assertion Supported
Miah: African equities outperformed other emerging markets in 2022
“Post-nineteen there was COVID, a lot of noise, but definitely this year is the first year in many that you've had outperformance by Africa. And very importantly to us, the bottom line continues to grow. The jaws are widening, but the bottom line continues to g…”
Assertion Partly supported
Miah: Private equity firms are taking African public companies private at 4x earnings
“We've seen private equity firms coming to the public markets, and Picking off the best jewels, which are trading at four times P, five times P and taking them private. So we have seen that materialize over the last few years in Africa.”
Assertion Supported
Miah: In late 2022, several African countries had lower inflation than the US and UK
“Some of our countries have inflation levels lower than the U.S. And the U.K., which I can't remember the last time that was the case.”
Disclosure
Miah: We favor African companies where the founding family retains 20% to 40% ownership
“Generally, we do like companies where the management team are part of the founding family, and they still own 20, 30, 40% because of the alignment of incentives and interests.”
Disclosure
Miah: We explicitly avoid commodities to focus on other African macro themes
“Commodities is the only one where we explicitly avoid and everything else is game. Everything else is open to investments, but we do maybe have a bias towards areas or sectors which are exposed to the big themes in Africa.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Miah: Africa offers very few asset-light SaaS investment opportunities
“We don't have many opportunities like that in, in Africa.”
Assertion Supported
Miah: Saudi Arabia and UAE show Africa's path to mainstream benchmarks
“In oh nine, Saudi where I lived and even Dubai, Abu Dhabi were Very much similar to Africa. Off benchmark. No one's really focusing on those areas. And fast forward 10 years, all of those markets became upgraded into the EM benchmark. Saudi Aramco got listed. …”
Assertion Supported
Miah: African equities generated a 7% to 9% USD CAGR from 2002 to 2020
“Between 2002 and 2020 the two decades overall, despite the last five years being quite difficult, it's been a reasonable period. So the market as a whole, if you just took the beta, the two 50 names that we're looking at, And the market grew at seven, eight, n…”
Assertion Supported
Miah: The African investable equity universe totals $500 billion across 260 companies
“The opportunity set, so when we exclude small caps and we exclude commodities, Today, there's around 260 names. In the early 2002, there's about a hundred names. So in terms of names, not significant growth, but when you look at market cap, more importantly, p…”
Assertion Partly supported
Miah: MTN Nigeria holds over 50% telecom market share in Nigeria
“So they're the, by far the most dominant telecom player in Nigeria, 50% and above market share.”
Assertion Supported
Miah: Africa is a $3T economy, equivalent to the world's eighth largest
“Africa as a whole, it's a three trillion dollar economy, eighth largest equivalent economy in the world, one and a half billion people”
Disclosure
Miah: All Africa Partners' portfolio generates a 33% ROE at an 8x P/E
“In terms of the portfolio, so our 10 stock portfolio, the current ROE is 33%. Into the dividend yield, we're talking about eight, nine percent dividend yield... And in terms of, again, valuations, the PE of the portfolio is today at eight, nine times PE.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Miah: Many African equities lost sell-side coverage as Wall Street downsized research teams
“And, you know, to further expand Colin's point, a lot of African names used to be covered, and then got dropped because of the last four or five years, and generally Wall Street and Southside being under pressure and letting go of people.”
Assertion Supported
Miah: South African equities are institutional, while North and East Africa are family-owned
“So South Africa would be a more typical US or UK style shareholder list. So often the pension funds are the largest, the big asset management firms are also in the top three, top five, top seven. It's a very institutional heavy shareholder list. Whereas when y…”
