Of shorts, 1.1 mn hijacked Egyptian smartphones and locusts.

Good morning, friends, and welcome to the slowest news day in forever. It’s the end-of-Ramadan slowdown here in Egypt, running headlong into Memorial Day weekend in the United States and the late-May bank holiday in the United Kingdom.

We’re not holding our collective breath, but don’t discount the odds of a late-week news pickup as folks look to finish things up prior to next week’s Eid El Fitr holiday.And as journalists everywhere know, the best time to take out the trash (or release, but minimize the impact of, bad news) is late on the day before a national holiday, so keep an eye on your trading screens and the news tickers next week.

So, when is Eid? The collective aspirations (delusions?) of the masses are calling Ramadan at 29 days this year, meaning the Eid would start next Monday night, giving us a five-day weekend. Otherwise, the last day of the Holy Month will be Tuesday.

UK International Trade Secretary Liam Fox will be in town today and tomorrow for meetings with senior administration officials on boosting trade and investments.

Keep your eyes on:

AmCham’s annual general meeting and iftar tomorrow. Members can register for the event here.

30 Saudi stocks will join the MSCI Emerging Markets Index at the end of tomorrow’s trading session.

The locusts are still heading our way. Readers may remember that we reported back in February the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s warning that a swarm of locusts was headed toward Egypt. Well, they’re here, with local officials in Luxor and Aswan governorates fighting “the advance of locust swarms … coming from Sudan [that] appeared on Friday night in the southern border region,” Ahram Online reports. The FAO’s Locust Watch site has yet to be updated with the new.

Why it’s a big deal: A square-kilometer swarm of 40 mn locusts can eat the same amount of food as 35,000 people, 20 camels, and six elephants in one day.

The international story of the morning: Populists failed in their assault on the European Parliament elections that wrapped yesterday. Heavy turnout favored the Greens and Liberals and gains by right-wing parties were moderate. Axios has a solid 6 key takeaways from the critical European elections. See also coverage from Politico, Reuters, Financial Times and Bloomberg.

Saudi Arabia upgrade to emerging market status doesn’t have global investors salivating: MSCI will include Saudi stocks in its benchmark EM index at the end of tomorrow’s trading session, and while passive inflows are expected to flood the Tadawul, active investors are taking a more critical look at the Saudi market, Bloomberg writes. Analysts think Saudi companies are overvalued in a market in which earnings expectations have continuously fallen since the start of the year. And remember this warning: FIS Group’s Adam Choppin suggested earlier this year that the pre-inclusion bump would fade as traders looked to sell and lock-in gains after with the arrival of passive inflows.

The Bloomberg Opinion writer who got the world talking about a “Digital Iron Curtain” last week is back, arguing fairly cogently that the Tech Cold War will force the world to choose sides. Stop us if this doesn’t resonate readers based in Egypt or other emerging markets: “US technology still leads the world … but China has shown a willingness to engage and help developing nations in ways the US once did. … It’s not just high-tech networks. Numerous developing nations want high-speed rail lines, efficient ports and airports, and energy-saving, low-pollutant electric vehicles. Each of these could be provided by America or its allies. Japan, Europe and Canada have the technology and skill to help. But in addition to being capable of offering those items, China has the political and fiscal capital to do so. The will already exists in the form of its Belt and Road Initiative.”

Speaking of China: A Chinese video downloader has been hijacking phones in Egypt and 14 other countries: Actis-backed Upstream’s security platform Secure-D has found that “hidden software” in Android app VidMate “hijacks mobile devices, eats up data, incurs unwanted charges, and collects personal user info,” a company document seen by Enterprise shows. The app, which has been downloaded by an estimated 500 mn people, has cost users around USD 170 mn in unwanted charges. Egypt users have suffered the highest concentration of “suspicious activity” flagged by Secure-D, with 43 mn transactions and 1.1 mn affected users. BuzzFeed also has the story, minus the Egypt angle.

What We’re Tracking Today, the Ramadan edition:

A pre-iftar reading list to kill time between your post-workout shower and the breaking of the fast:

• The US Navy is taking UFOs seriously. Or at least taking seriously the procedures for how pilots should report “what the military calls unexplained aerial phenomena.” A cool piece, worth a read if only so you can justify watching the included videos in which Navy pilots freak out (kind of joyously) over two encounters with what are literally unidentified flying objects (but not necessarily extraterrestrial objects).
• The rich world is enjoying an unprecedented jobs boom, the Economist writes, arguing that “the left” needs to give capitalism a little bit of credit for that, at least — even though the boom won’t outlive the recession. As for income disparities, the lot of workers in emerging and frontier markets, and the prospect of the robot-led Jobs Apocalypse? Look away, look away…
• It’s nearly time for WWDC, one of two (or sometimes three) annual holidays on the calendars of iSheep everywhere as they wait to see what goodies Apple has in store for them. This year’s iteration takes place on Monday, 3 June, so you’ll start your Eid with visions of Apple’s latest software features dancing in your head. Bloomberg and iMore have excellent rundowns on what you can expect.

Random note #1- Airbnb in Arabic. Airbnb has made its website and mobile app available in Arabic, via our friends at MENAbytes.

Random note #2- The top five brands for Gen Z kids in the US of A are Google, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon and … Oreo cookies. We kid you not. The cookies beat out PlayStation, Marvel comics, Instagram and Spotify for the number five spot.

Random note #3- The Toronto Raptors will make their first-ever appearance in the NBA finals, playing the Golden State Warriors (coached by Cairo American College alum Steve Kerr) after coming from behind to wing the Eastern Conference final by winning four straight games. The resident 11-year-old reports that she is very pleased.

RAMADAN PSA- Bank hours are at 9am-2pm for employees; doors are open from 9:30am until 1:30pm for customers. The trading day at the EGX runs 10:00am until 1:30pm.

So, when do we eat? Maghrib is at 6:48pm CLT today in Cairo. You’ll have until 3:13am tomorrow morning to caffeinate / finish your sohour.

WEATHER- Look for a high today of 36°C and an overnight low of 21°C.

Have someone you want to short? Here is your list of targets: The Egyptian Exchange released yesterday the list (pdf) of stocks that can be shorted. The list of 30 companies includes Telecom Egypt, EFG Hermes, Palm Hills, Qalaa Holdings, Elsewedy Electric, Orascom Investment, Talaat Moustafa, CIB, Sodic and the EGX30 Index ETF, among others.

How were these shares selected? Shares need to meet a threshold qualifying them as frequently traded and at least 10% of registered brokerage firms need to be trading the share in question. The company’s freefloating shares must have a turnover rate of 20%. You can check out the selection criteria, issued earlier this month, here.

What are the regulations for short sellers? The Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) in February issued regulations for short selling on the EGX, allowing brokerage firms to act as market makers by finding lenders and borrowers of stocks. Under the regulations, you can only short 25% of a company’s freefloat shares while any one shareholder won’t be able to lend more than 5% of a company’s shares. The regulations will also cap the total percentage of any company’s shares that can be used to create a short position. Folks looking to open a short position will need to put down 50% of the value of the securities borrowed, and brokerages will be required to park 20% in fixed-income instruments while the position is open.

Mommy, what’s a short? Think of it this way: For whatever reason, you think a share is overvalued. How do you profit on your belief? By shorting it. At the simplest level, it works like this:

• Borrow the shares (likely from someone who wants to hold them long-term);
• Sell them;
• Pray the price goes down (and mount an activist campaign if you have to…);
• Buy them back on the open market and return them to their rightful owner to “close out your position”;
• Pocket the difference (presuming, of course, the price went down).

Why this is a really risky thing to do: Let’s say you’re wrong. The share goes up. You still need to close out your short position, and you’ll do so at a loss by buying them back at more than you sold them for — incurring interest expenses on your margin account in the process. Investopedia has more.

FinMin looking to narrow Egypt’s financing gap to EGP 720 bn next fiscal year -Kouchouk: The Finance Ministry is working to trim EGP 100 bn off Egypt’s forecasted budget deficit in FY2019-2020 to EGP 720 bn, Vice Minister of Finance Ahmed Kouchouk tells Al Shorouk. According to Kouchouk, the ministry is looking to extend the tenors of some of its debt, including zero coupon bonds. The government plans to plug the gap with bond issuances and the final USD 2 bn tranche of the IMF facility, which is expected to land in Egypt in July, in addition to eurobond and green bond issuances.

Background: Egypt has around EGP 375.5 bn in maturing debt, with total interests payments projected at EGP 569 bn next fiscal year, a senior government official had told us last month. The government estimates a 1% increase in global interest rates would raise Egypt’s borrowing costs by EGP 8-10 bn. The Finance Ministry began earlier this year implementing a comprehensive debt reduction strategy, which aims to reduce debt to 80% of GDP by 2022. The strategy is seeing the government extending the maturities of its debt and speed up inclusion of informal businesses into the formal economy.

Bank investments in SME-focused equity funds now count toward minimum small business loan requirement: The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) agreed yesterday to allow banks to count their own equity investments in SME-focused funds as part of the mandatory minimum portion of their loan portfolios they are required to allocate to SMEs, according to a circular published yesterday (pdf). The measure is meant to give commercial banks incentives to back angel investors, venture capitalists, and private equity growth funding for SMEs.

Background: Under the CBE’s EGP 200 bn SME finance initiative, commercial banks are required to allocate 20% of their loan portfolios to SMEs at 5% interest. Yesterday’s decision will also set the relative risk of banks’ investments in these equity funds at 0%, provided the investments meet certain requirements.

Gov’t taps OC-led consortium to enter talks on 6 October-new capital monorail -report: A consortium of Orascom Construction, Arab Contractors and Canada’s Bombardier has been selected to enter negotiations on the construction of the 6 October-new capital monorail, Al Masry Al Youm reports, citing unnamed sources. The government could still consider offers from the second competing consortium — made up of China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), the Arab Organization for Industrialization’s railways factory SEMAF, Samcrete and Petrojet — if no agreement is reached, the sources noted.

Cabinet announced last week that it has selected the winning bid. The project will see the consortium construct two high-speed monorail lines that will link the new administrative capital to 6 October.

Did someone say monorail?

Beltone Financial and Orascom Investment Holding have decided against renewing a management services agreement between the two companies after its expiry this October, Beltone said in a bourse filing (pdf). Beltone’s Chairman Sameh El Torgoman and Managing Director Bassem Azab will accordingly resign their positions, according to the statement.

The 4,600-year-old ship buried in the Great Pyramid of Giza with the pharaoh Khufu was celebrated in a Google Doodleyesterday making the 65th anniversary of its discovery.

It’s an exceptionally slow news day for Egypt in the international press amid a bank holiday in the UK and Memorial Day weekend in the United States. Dominating the (very quiet) conversation are pickups of wire reports that the assets of Mubarak-era Interior Minister Habib El Adly have been unfrozen.

Elsewhere, Egypt’s influence on Gaza’s educational system is in the spotlight, with academic Mona Jebril arguing in University World News that it is preventing institutional and structural reform by failing to cultivate critical thinking.

Netflix versus the world: Netflix may be the go-to source for films and TV shows for 149 mn people worldwide, but competitors are lining up to change that, this video from the Wall Street Journal explains (watch, runtime: 04:48). Along with existing rivals Amazon, Hulu and Apple, new rivals Comcast, AT&T and Disney are all gearing up to launch streaming services of their own within a year. Films and TV shows licensed to Netflix over the years could leave the service amid (a) heightened competition or (b) companies like Disney (which own top properties) clawing the rights back to make them exclusive to their own services. Think: So whether it’s Comcast’s streaming service offering The Office or Parks & Recreation, AT&T’s Warner Media showing Friends, or Disney+ offering the Star Wars and Marvel Studios films.

The upshot: Subscribers to streaming services in emerging markets including Egypt could be locked out of (legal) ways of streaming their favorite shows.

And then there’s Egyptian TV shows versus YouTube: It’s not quite the same playing field, but Egyptian Media Company has also entered the streaming space with its app, Watch iT. The app is meant to protect Egyptian shows and films from copyright infringement as a result of without-charge online streaming and piracy, the company said in a statement yesterday.

Home appliance manufacturer Electrostar is looking to grow its business 20% this year, in large part through increased exports to Africa, Managing Director Khaled El Menoufy tells Al Shorouk.

The government will unveil in August the conditions for 600 MW-worth of solar projects that will be tendered under a newly-introduced auction system, Electricity Ministry sources told the press. The new mechanism will be similar to a Dutch auction, where prices are gradually reduced until a bid is made. The ministry will kick off the first of three tenders under this framework with a 200 MW project at an undisclosed location. The mechanism’s conditions will be set by the International Finance Corporation, which is acting as an advisor to the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company. Eighteen companies and consortiums, including a consortium led by Orascom and stand-alone tech and industrial giant Toyota Tsusho, have prequalified to bid for the tenders.

The government is saving some USD 350 mn each year due to energy efficiency improvements in oil refineries, a source from the Oil Ministry said. Egypt is set to join the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership initiative to eliminate routine gas flaring throughout the country by 2030, the source added.

Egypt has bought 2.7 mn tonnes of local wheat so far this season, according to an Al Akhbar story picked up Reuters. Supply Minister Ali El Moselhy previously announced plans to procure 3.6 mn tonnes of wheat from local farmers this season.

Egypt’s cotton exports increased 52% y-o-y to 579.3k qintars during the first quarter of this season, compared to 379.7k qintars in the same period last year, according to CAPMAS figures (pdf). The cotton export season began last December and is set to wrap in August.

The New Urban Communities Authority will offer an 85-feddan land plot near New Cairo reclaimed from Al Marasem International for Development to real estate developers in 2H2019, a source from the New Cairo City Authority said. Al Marasem, a Bin Laden Group subsidiary, asked the authority to take back the land after failing to make several installment payments. The company has retained a nearby 150 feddan plot for a development project.

Egypt’s Arkan Palm has awarded the design contract for a 205-acre mixed-use development in Sheikh Zayed City to Gensler, an architecture firm based in the US, Thomson Reuters Projects News reports. The development will be a commercial and leisure complex, constructed in partnership with the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA). Gensler will complete its designs within five months, and the project will then submit all documentation for ministerial approvals and licenses, Arkan Palm said in a statement last week.

Tourism companies will be required to electronically submit documents detailing the packages they offer after the Tourism Ministry launches the second phase of its tourism e-services platform on 1 June, head of the ministry’s company regulation authority Magdy Shalaby said, according to Al Shorouk. The ministry also plans to bring the full licensing process online during later phases.

Maridive & Oil Services has named Grant Thorton as independent financial advisor to prepare a fair value report for the company’s share price ahead of a potential USD 37 mn capital increase, the company said in a bourse filing (pdf). UAE-based investor Najjad Zeenni had announced earlier this month his intention to acquire a stake in Maridive worth as much as USD 37 mn. The move would see Zeenni, who currently owns a 25% stake in Valentine, agree to an effective share swap with Maridive, subscribing to the USD 37 mn capital increase at a price of USD 0.61 per share.

The EGX has been marketing the benefits of life as a listed companies in a series of sit-downs since October with executives from 79 non-listed companies, according to a press release. The companies have an average capital of EGP 700 mn, and operate across a variety of sectors, including real estate, pharma, food processing and energy.

Zamalek FC was crowned yesterday the champions of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup for the first time in the club’s history, after beating Morocco’s RS Berkane 5-3 in a penalty shootout, Kick Off reports. This is also the first continental championship Zamalek has won since 2002.

Egyptian squash champions Nouran Gohar and Mohamed Elshorbagy won the women’s and men’s PSA British Open in Hull yesterday, according to Inside the Games. Gohar defeated France’s Camille Serme for the women’s title — making her the second Egyptian woman to earn the title — while Elshorbagy defeated compatriot and world number one Aly Farag for the men’s title.

Scientists discover gold-detecting fungi Down Under: Scientists have found a strain of fungus near Boddington in Western Australia that dissolves and precipitates gold on its surface, moving it closer to the Earth’s surface, researchers said in a paper for Nature Communications, according to The Scientist. “Gold is so chemically inactive that this interaction is both unusual and surprising,” lead researcher Dr Tsing Bohu told the stop-fungus-meds.com. Bohu and his team stumbled upon this new type of fungi, Fusarium oxysporum, while looking into the cause of high gold oxidation in the so-called Golden Triangle Gold Prospect.

Egypt officially has its first bike park: The aptly named Bike Park, Egypt’s first-ever park dedicated to cyclists, is now open on Future City’s Ismailia Road, according to Scoop Empire. The 210-acre park includes cafes and other facilities, as well as a racing track. Cyclists can also rent out bikes at the park for a small fee.