EnterprisePM — It’s a good week for IPOs.

Good afternoon, everyone. It’s looking like a busy news week for business, particularly as the new listings kick in the door to capital markets, with the retail offering of higher education management company Taaleem’s IPO being 29x oversubscribed on Thursday.

The state appears to want to get in on the action, with news circulating that state e-payments firm e-Finance’s IPO is moving along. We break this down in the Speed Round below.

A good week for Capex? As for Integrated Diagnostics Holdings (IDH) — that other upcoming EGX listing — the company is planning a major expansion in their labs here. You can catch the highlights in the Speed Round.

We also have updates on this morning’s margin trading story in Go With The Flow, with the FRA introducing new regulations on margin trading today.

CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from this morning’s issue of EnterpriseAM:

• The World Bank praised Egypt’s primary surplus, saying it signifies we’re on track to a sustainable debt strategy.
• The Industrial Development Authority (IDA) has shelved a tender for a license to set up Egypt’s second tobacco company
• Some 500k tourists visited Egypt in 1Q2021, generating USD 600-800 mn in tourism revenues

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HAPPENING NOW- Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan are back to the negotiating table in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, marking the first African Union-brokered round of talks over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) following an almost three-month hiatus, according to a Foreign Ministry statement. The three countries’ foreign, water and irrigation ministers are now sitting down to resume talks — presided over by Congolese President and current AU Chairman Félix Tshisekedi — in the hopes of reaching a lawfully binding agreement, following meetings of the technical committees yesterday, it added.

There’s speculation that the three countries’ leaders could meet on Tuesday if the ministerial talks fail to yield a breakthrough, Sky News reports. The resumption of the fraught negotiations comes after President Abdel Fattah El Sisi indirectly warned Addis Ababa that it wouldn’t be allowed to take “a drop of Egypt’s water.” Egypt has been pushing to rally international support on the GERD issue, with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman giving us public backing as Ethiopia persists to continue plans to move ahead with the reservoir’s second filling in the upcoming rainy season in August.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD- Washington and Tehran have agreed to hold indirect talks starting this Tuesday in Vienna to warm up for the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, almost three years after former President Donald Trump had pulled the US out of the agreement, the US State Department said in a statement Friday. The talks are considered a starting point “to clearly identify sanctions lifting and nuclear implementation measures,” Chairman of the organization overseeing the nuclear agreement Enrique Mora said in a separate statement. However, Tehran appears to be taking an all or nothing approach, after a foreign ministry spokesperson said it wouldn’t negotiate a step-by-step reentry to the agreement.

MANDATORY COVID STORY- Pfizer and BioNTech’s covid-19 shot continues to be over 91% effective six months after inoculation, showing just a slight downgrade from the 95% efficacy reported from a clinical trial in November, according to follow-up data from a final stage trial of the vaccine, the drugmaker announced Thursday. Preliminary results from a subset study also indicated the vaccine was effective against the South Africa variant of the virus. The company will now apply for full US regulatory approval, Pfizer said.

More instances of blood clots in individuals who had received the AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine have cropped up, as the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory announced it had registered 30 instances of blood clots out of 18.1 mn doses administered as of 1 April, up from five cases from 11 mn doses administered by 18 March, Reuters reports.

For context: 30 cases out of 18.1 mn individuals vaccinated is 0.00017% and five cases out of 11 mn is an incidence rate of 0.000045%.

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FOR TOMORROW-

It’s PMI day: PMI figures for March will land tomorrow at 6:15 am CLT. Non-oil private sector conditions worsened for the third consecutive month in February, but at a milder rate, with the gauge rising slightly to 49.3 in February from 48.7 the month before.

Score another one for our IPO pipeline: Over 577 mn shares of Macro Group Pharma will be listed on the EGX tomorrow ahead of the company’s IPO. Trading on shares is scheduled to begin on 19 April under ticker symbol MCRO.CA. The subscription period for the retail portion of the offering is slated for 8-14 April.

The Spring Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank Group begin tomorrow and run through next Sunday, 11 April. This year’s virtual meetings will bring together central bankers, ministers of finance and development, private sector executives, representatives from civil society organizations and academics. The topics up for discussion include the world economic outlook, poverty eradication, economic development, aid effectiveness, and the global financial system. Some events will be open to the public and can be streamed live from the World Bank’s platform.

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The French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Egypt is organizing a webinar on the government's Real Estate Wealth Inventory and Management Project in collaboration with LYNX Strategic Business Advisors this Tuesday, 6 April at 4pm. The gathering will take a deep dive into the Madbouly government’s program to create a national ID for all residential and commercial properties and to digitalize the country’s building permit system. The event’s keynote speaker will be Egypt’s Deputy ICT Minister Khaled El Attar who will discuss administrative development, digital transformation and automation, He will be joined by Carrefour COO Hervé Majidier, Tameer CEO Antoine El Khoury, and Voltalia Egypt Country Manager Karim Elazzawi. You can register for the event using this form.

ITIDA is hosting the ‘Hangout with VCs’ event this Thursday, 8 April in collaboration with The Financial Times’ The Next Web — a well-established global network of investors and VCs focusing on tech — that will be presented with Egyptian startups, according to a press release (pdf). Startups can submit applications until the day of the event here.

The Spring Flowers Exhibit (Ma3rad El Zohoor) is currently taking place at Orman Botanical Garden in Giza. More than 200 exhibitors have set up shop to sell flowers, plants, agricultural products, and gardening equipment. The exhibit runs through 13 April.

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The royal mummy parade is still making rounds in the foreign press this afternoon. In case you’ve been living under a rock, 22 mummies were relocated to the Museum of Egyptian Civilizations in Fustat in an elaborate ceremony last evening. Catch more on the parade from The Independent | CNN | USA Today | Emirates News Agency | Africa News | The Telegraph | RT | CNA Lifestyle | South China Morning Post

Airlines want the vaccine passport, but not the fines: Airlines are lobbying against the responsibility of implementing the EU’s digital green certificate that documents covid-19 vaccination, WSJ reports. While the airlines back the concept, they cannot afford the risk of more fines or the costs of policing vaccine and covid-19 documentation, industry sources tell the publication. Airlines are fined up to EUR 10k for allowing a traveller to land in a country without the correct visa, and the current proposal could see the airlines slammed with similar fines, they add. The proposal requires ratification from the European Parliament, and is expected for a June rollout.

We keep telling you, covid passports are a thing: As we had mentioned previously, with major economies including China, Japan, Denmark and Israel independently announcing they are developing vaccination passport systems as well.

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The Serpent seems promising. The Netflix Original is a crime drama following the conman and murderer Charles Sobhraj and his girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc who posed as gem sellers and traversed Asia in 1975 and 1976, committing a spree of crimes along the 'Hippie Trail'. The duo stole victims' passports and identities to travel the world but were eventually caught with the help of Dutch diplomat, Herman Knippenberg, whose investigation into the murders of Dutch tourists uncovered clues leading to Sobhraj. You can read more about the mini -series and how the real events seemed “too bizarre for TV” in this piece by The LA Times.

Netflix wants us to binge-watch Chucky movies — did anyone know there were so many? Four of the evil doll’s movies have landed on Netflix over the weekend: Child’s Play 2, Child’s Play 3, Bride of Chucky, and Seed of Chucky. If you’re a horror movie buff and want a bit of nostalgia, this could be a binge-watching session for this week.

The English Premier League’s gameweek 30 continues today, with the match between Southampton and Burnley ending with Southampton coming out on top with a score of 3-2. NewCastle and Tottenham are also currently on the field having just started the match half an hour ago. Meanwhile, Aston Villa go head-to-head with Fulham at 5:30 and Manchester United will play against Brighton at 8:30pm.

La Liga is also underway, with Alaves on the field with Celta Vigo and Elche and Real Betis to begin the match soon at 4:15pm. Cadiz and Valencia will compete at 6:30pm and Sevilla will play against Atletico Madrid at 9pm.

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Lucca Steakhouse has become famous for their dry aged meat and signature steaks. If you visit the restaurant in Sheikh Zayed’s Al Guezira Plaza, you’ll be in for a culinary and atmospheric treat with their edgy decor and heaping and detailed dishes. The restaurant also features a live kitchen where you can watch your order of meats being torched and cooked in dancing flames. We recommend the T-bone steak or the butter shrimp as main dishes, and don’t miss out on their side plates such as their mac and cheese. For dessert give their ice cream ghazal a go.

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The exhibit opening of Singular by Salam Yousry is taking place today at 6pm at SOMA Art School and Gallery in Zamalek. Through his art, Yousry explores the relationship between the individual and the collective, looking at aspects such as how the body performs itself within a social sphere. The exhibit will run until 22 April.

It’s Make'em Laugh night at The Room Art Space in New Cairo, with hosts Ahmed El-Hareedy, Mohamed Gamal El-Din, and Alaa El-Sheikh. Anyone from the audience can choose to get on the stage and take a shot at stand-up comedy. The event starts at 9pm.

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Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life is a guide to bring an end to wasteful meetings, disorganized papers, endless emails, and unnecessary tasks. The book, written by Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein, offers stories and strategies on how to make the most of working hours and increase efficiency while ultimately boosting your own career prospects.

???? TOMORROW’S WEATHER- And the heat wave begins… The mercury is going all the way up to 33°C tomorrow with bright sunny skies, before temperatures fall to 16°C at night, our favorite weather app tells us. The heat wave will continue all through the working week, falling back to the 20s during the weekend.

State-owned e-payments firm e-Finance could pull the trigger on its IPO sometime during the second half of the year, Chairman Ibrahim Sarhan told Hapi Journal. The company has wrapped up a final valuation study and completed other necessary procedures and is now waiting for the government committee managing the state privatization program to review the paperwork, Sarhan said.

E-Finance was earlier expected to complete the listing in the first or second quarters of the year, but a hold-up in a fair value report scheduled to be completed at the end of January delayed that plan. The IPO was originally slated for the end of 2019, before the government kicked all upcoming state IPOs into 2021, citing unexpected delays, and then further into 2021.

The time is right: The dust is now settling after “unfavorable conditions” (read: covid-19) in public markets set back the listing, Sarhan told the newspaper today. The company has been waiting for signs of a recovery, he says.

E-Finance’s EGX debut would piggyback on momentum from several listings that are coming up after a long period of inactivity. Another state-owned company expected to make a hotly-anticipated debut on the exchange is Banque du Caire, but we’re yet to hear more on the offering, which could take place by the end of 2021. As for the private sector, higher education management company Taaleem is set to begin trading on Wednesday, after seeing high demand from retail investors last week, and leading cosmeceutical and nutraceutical player Macro Pharma will start trading on 19 April as it wraps up another IPO. Those IPOs are among a total of five or six that could hit the exchange this year, EGX boss Mohamed Farid expects.

In the meantime, e-Finance is ramping up investments in three core projects: The first is a plan to set up E-Tax, a EGP 100 mn JV with the Finance Ministry to provide services and tech solutions to companies and authorities as Egypt transitions toward an electronic tax system. The second involves applying for a license from the CIT Ministry’s ITIDA to establish a new EGP 15 mn company to provide e-signature services, while the third involves building and operating an electronic ticketing system for Egypt’s railway at an initial investment cost of EGP 230 mn.

Integrated Diagnostics Holdings (IDH) plans to add 30-35 new branches in Egypt, Jordan, and Sudan this year — amid its plans for a technical listing on the EGX this month, CEO Dr. Hend El Sherbini told the press. IDH’s expansion plan for Egypt includes inaugurating a third branch of Al Borg Scan. The Heliopolis facility will be added alongside existing branches in Shobra and Mohandeseen, with an eye to operate six sites of the scan centers across Egypt by the end of 2022, according to El Sherbini.

The LSE-listed consumer healthcare giant is also planning to set up at least 28 branches in Nigeria in 2022, where it operates a network of medical diagnostics labs, El Sherbini said.

IDH’s footprint: The company operates 429 branches in Egypt, including its flagships Al Borg Laboratories and Al Mokhtabar. Its central Mega Lab is the Middle East’s largest facility of its kind and can run 20k tests per hour on global-standard equipment. ِIt controls over half of Egypt’s private diagnostics markets and has a total of 480 branches across the four countries in which it’s present.

EGX listing plans: IDH is listed on the LSE, and had a market cap equivalent to USD 642 mn in early April 2021. It became the first Egyptian healthcare company to IPO in London when it sold 43.5% of its shares in 2015, raising USD 290 mn in an offering that was 11x oversubscribed. The company is now planning to debut in Cairo through a technical listing (which involves listing shares but not offering new equities for sale) in a bid to get new investors on board. It received approval last week from the Financial Regulatory Authority to proceed with the transaction, which will see it list 5% of its shares as early as this month.

Egyptian SMEs will have access to a new EGP 500 mn impact investment fund that Catalyst Partners is setting up after signing an MoU with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), according to Al Mal. There are no further details available on how the fund will classify “impactful” businesses. The fund will be established with unnamed Egyptian and Gulf partners and UNDP’s participation in the fund will support creating new standards for development, Catalyst Partners Managing Director Abdelaziz Abdel Nabi said at a presser after signing the agreement, reports Al Mal in a separate story.

This isn’t their first impact investment rodeo: Catalyst and the UNDP cooperated earlier this year to create a toolkit for “investment-ready” SMEs to help them measure their environmental and social impacts. The partnership was designed to channel more investment into sustainable Egyptian businesses.

Online marketplace OLX has launched its delivery service in Egypt on its website and mobile application, making it the first platform to offer consumer-to-consumer e-commerce transactions in the country, according to a press release (pdf). OLX will contract couriers from courier companies, who will manage the logistics and provide both tracking and payment collection services for a predefined fee. In the initial phase of the service, OLX users in Cairo and Giza can buy and sell small and medium-sized products, but the platform plans to roll out the service in all governorates and offer shipping for heavier products, such as furniture, in upcoming phases.

E-commerce has been booming in Egypt, especially in the past year since the beginning of the pandemic. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE together accounted for some 80% of the MENA region’s USD 22 bn e-commerce sector in 2020, and expectations are that e-commerce in the region will continue growing this year by another 31%.

CATCH UP QUICK-

• A new automatic signaling system will be installed on three railway lines in Egypt by next year, Transport Minister Kamel El Wazir said over the weekend (watch, runtime: 52:51), a week after a deadly train crash in Sohag Governorate killed 18 and injured 200. The government will contract Siemens, Thales Group, and Alstom to install the system, which the minister said should be finished in 2Q2022. The project will see signaling systems upgraded on the Cairo-Aswan line, Cairo-Alexandria line, and the line passing through Benha, Zagazig, Ismailia, and Port Said.

The EGX30 fell 1.4% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 789 mn (45.2% below the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net sellers. The index is down 4.0% YTD.

In the green: Eastern Co. (+1.6%) and Oriental Weavers (+0.3%).

In the red: Abu Qir Fertilizers (-4.4%), MM Group (-3.7%) and Ibnsina Pharma (-3.6%).

Fund managers licensed by the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) are now allowed to engage in margin trading under an FRA decision cited by Al Mal. The decision comes after the FRA green-lit a new EGP 1 bn+ fund that will be deployed to support margin lending through brokerages in a bid to boost trading volumes on the bourse. The decision also comes after brokerages proposed introducing restrictions on margin trading, including setting limits on the volume of margin trades allowed for each security as well as the market as a whole.

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EARNINGS WATCH-Ezz Steel reported consolidated net losses of EGP 4.68 bn in 2020, narrowing from EGP 8.11 bn the previous year, according to its latest earnings (pdf). Sales revenue fell 16% y-o-y to EGP 38.6 bn during the year.

Money laundering has flourished during the covid-19 pandemic: While the pandemic has put a dent on much business activity worldwide, lockdown measures have presented criminals with the ideal situation to commit laundering offences, said the US’s Financial Action Task Force — the intergovernmental watchdog for financial crime — according to a Financial Times video (watch, runtime: 02:42). The UK reported a 20% y-o-y increase in suspicious activity reports in FY2019-2020, while January of that year saw a 116% rise in case submissions from the country’s anti-laundering agency, according to a National Crime Agency report.

How has lockdown helped launderers? Money laundering generally takes the form of bulk money smuggling, bank transactions, or export trade transactions. The latter two methods appeared to increase during the pandemic, as criminals took advantage of banks moving customer interactions online by exploiting difficulties in verifying customer identity. With the pandemic also leaving many businesses in financial need, criminals began to use legitimate, but failing businesses as a front for illegal activity.

What are countries doing to prevent this? The US introduced the Anti-Money Laundering Act last year which obliged banks and other financial institutions to take stricter measures to detect suspicious activity while also giving more power to authorities to demand documents from foreign banks. In the EU, a central money laundering supervisor has been created by the European Central Bank to increase enforcement, and has adopted an Anti-Money Laundering Action Plan that coordinates the exchange of information between more than 50 authorities concerned with combating money laundering.

The search for silicon’s successor is on: Tech experts are looking to the next generation of 2-D materials to replace, or at least enhance, the material that has so far made all of our gadgets possible, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though silicon has served as a reliable base for the last 70 years, it is nearing the limits of its potential to support technological advancement. Moore’s law — a theory that the number of transistors you can fit onto a silicon microchip doubles every year — is slowing down, and researchers have identified hundreds of materials that fall under the 2-D family that could help us fit more transistors onto ever thinner microchips, to power the pocket-sized supercomputers of the future.

What are 2-D materials? The atom-thin substances include black phosphorus, transition metal dichalcogenides and boron nitride nanosheets, as well as the forerunner of them all, graphene, the discovery of which earned its makers a Nobel prize in physics. Though recently obscure, these materials are now regularly fabricated in labs and can be found in devices on sale today.

Graphene has already found a number of applications, having been used to cool smartphone batteries, make athletic gear more durable, and to manufacture prototypes for bulletproof armour. Graphene has even been used to develop biosensors with applications such as detecting covid-19 particles and other pathogens in the air, or scanning virtually any biological matter for contamination.

But 2-D materials’ key use will be in the development of microchips, with scientists positing that the development of chips that support photons rather than electrons could significantly accelerate our computer power, as light is a far faster means of communication than electricity. In addition, 2-D materials could also beat silicon when it comes to chip stacking, which is already common in flash memory and mobile devices. Because 2-D materials are so thin, stacking the chips would add significant power to a device without increasing its size, while the heat dissipating qualities of graphene mean devices would not be in danger of overheating.

The graphene-silicon combo could also create better cameras that are ultrathin and ultrasensitive, because graphene can yield optical sensors a hundred times more sensitive to light than those made with silicon. Graphene-based materials can also make inexpensive, high-resolution infrared mobile cameras, which are already in the prototype stage.

Future applications of 2-D materials we’re likely to see over the next decade include adding new features to known devices, like infrared vision to smartphones, as well as creating computing devices that are far more powerful and more energy efficient than those we know today. This could enable new forms of human-computer interaction, such as augmented-reality systems that fit into everyday eyeglasses.

But 2-D materials still can’t beat silicon on manufacturability, and that may be the key to keeping us silicon-dependent. Researchers are still looking for the right balance between desirable traits, cost-efficiency, and manufacturability, before being able to take 2-D materials mainstream. For now, 2-D materials occupy a marginal space in the semiconductor and tech industry at large, but as we stretch silicon to its absolute limits with our research into quantum computing, and our demand for ever faster and smaller devices, we are paving the way for their heyday.

April: The government’s fuel pricing committee is scheduled to meet for its quarterly review of prices.

5-11 April: The Spring Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank Group will take place virtually.

5-6 April (Monday-Tuesday): Cityscape Egypt virtual conference on real estate investment.

6 April (Tuesday): French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Egypt working breakfast with Sovereign Fund of Egypt CEO Ayman Soliman.

6 April (Tuesday): French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Egypt will host the “Egyptian Government's Real Estate Wealth Inventory and Management Project” webinar.

7 April (Wednesday): British-Egyptian Business Association (BEBA) webinar on digital banking and fintech.

8 April (Thursday): The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) will host a matchmaking virtual event, dubbed “Hangout with VCs.”

8-10 April (Thursday-Saturday): The TriFactory’s Endurance Festival at Somabay.

12 April (Sunday): Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will visit Egypt for GERD talks (watch: runtime: 1:28).

13 April (Monday): First day of Ramadan (TBC).

25 April (Sunday): Sinai Liberation Day.

29 April (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Sinai Liberation Day (TBC),

29 April (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

1 May (Saturday): Labor Day (national holiday).

2 May (Sunday): Coptic Easter Sunday.

3 May (Monday): Sham El Nessim.

13-15 May (Thursday-Saturday): Eid El Fitr (TBC).

25-28 May (Tuesday-Friday): The World Economic Forum annual meeting, Singapore.

1 June (Tuesday): The IMF will conduct a second review of targets set under the USD 5.2 bn standby loan approved in June 2020 (proposed date).

7-9 June (Monday-Wednesday): Egypt Petroleum Show, Egypt International Exhibition Center, New Cairo, Egypt.

17 June (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

17-20 June (Thursday-Sunday) : The International Exhibition of Materials and Technologies for Finishing and Construction (Turnkey Expo), Cairo International Conference Center.

24 June (Thursday): End of the 2020-2021 academic year (public schools).

26-29 June (Saturday-Tuesday): The Big 5 Construct Egypt, Cairo International Convention Center, Cairo, Egypt.

30 June (Wednesday): 30 June Revolution Day.

30 June- 15 July: National Book Fair.

1 July: (Thursday): National holiday in observance of 30 June Revolution.

1 July (Thursday): Large taxpayers that have not yet signed on on to the e-invoicing platform will suffer a host of penalties, including removal from large taxpayer classification, losing access to government services and business, and losing subsidies.

19 July (Monday): Arafat Day (national holiday).

20-23 July (Tuesday-Friday): Eid Al Adha (national holiday)

23 July (Friday): Revolution Day (national holiday).

5 August (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

9 August (Monday): Islamic New Year.

12 August (Thursday): National holiday in observance of the Islamic New Year.

12-15 September (Sunday-Wednesday): Sahara Expo: the 33rd International Agricultural Exhibition for Africa and the Middle East.

16 September (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

30 September-2 October (Thursday-Saturday): Egypt Projects 2021 expo, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo, Egypt.

1 October (Friday): Expo 2020 Dubai opens.

6 October (Wednesday): Armed Forces Day.

7 October (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Armed Forces Day.

12-14 October (Tuesday – Thursday) Mediterranean Offshore Conference, Alexandria, Egypt

18 October (Monday): Prophet’s Birthday.

21 October (Thursday): National holiday in observance of the Prophet’s Birthday.

28 October (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

1-3 November (Monday-Wednesday): Egypt Energy exhibition on power and renewable energy, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo, Egypt

1-12 November (Monday-Friday): 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), Glasgow, United Kingdom.

29 November – 2 December (Monday-Thursday): Egypt Defense Expo

13-17 December: United Nations Convention against Corruption, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

16 December (Thursday): The CBE’s Monetary Policy Committee will meet to review interest rates.

27 June – 3 July 2022 (Monday-Sunday): World University Squash Championships, New Giza.

Note to readers: Some national holidays may appear twice above. Since 2020, Egypt has observed most mid-week holidays on Thursdays regardless of the day on which they fall and may also move those days to Sundays. We distinguish below between the actual holiday and its observance.