OUR ANALYST OF THE WEEK- Abanob Magdy, associate vice president at Beltone Financial.

My name is Abanob Magdy and I’ve been at Beltone Financial for the past two years. I started my career at Deloitte as a financial auditor and while it helped me enter the financial field, I wasn’t a big fan of auditing itself. So I decided to do my CFA and I moved to AlexBank which was like being at a financial academy. I learned so much, especially since the bank is a subsidiary of Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo Group and most departments are led by their Italian counterparts. After four years at AlexBank, I decided to move into investment banking and transferred to Prime Holding for a few months before landing my position at Beltone.

I currently cover banking and NBFS companies in Egypt and Saudi, but the company has plans to expand into GCC and North Africa in the future.

The best part of my job is seeing how one’s call yields results. It takes time to be able to hone in on that skill and make effective calls, but once you do, there’s a huge satisfaction in it.

The worst part of my job is that you always have to be up to date. This also holds true during vacation time. I had to work at a point during my honeymoon and my wife was not happy [laughs]. She knows me well though so she gave me a “bera7tak” and it passed. Work-life balance doesn’t always come easy, but when I can, I try to achieve it by being 100% present in the situation I’m in whether it’s in my personal life or at work.

My theory of investing is inspired by Warren Buffet. The most important factor to look at in a company you’re thinking of investing in is whether it has a durable competitive advantage which will help it maneuver through tough circumstances. However, you also have to get the timing right. I’m a big fan of Buffet’s quote, “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful,” which urges investors to buy stocks when there’s a selloff and sell stocks when there’s a hype in the market.

I’m also an advocate for long-term investing. Waiting out a company’s market cycle allows you to harvest the real value when it's recognized.

I think the Export Development Bank of Egypt is an undiscovered gem. The EGX30-listed company is on the rise and has great potential in the Egyptian market.

All things considered, 2020 was not a bad year for the Egyptian economy. Businesses managed to hold themselves somewhat upright and even the volatility in the stock market was more of a representation of who was participating in trading as opposed to trouble in the economy. I think 2021 will see this upwards trajectory continue, fueled by an evident recovery, successful stimulus programs, and a solid banking sector.

Less travel has made work harder and less efficient. Online work is maybe 60% as effective as face-to-face interaction. I also think roadshows won’t be back for another year and a half at least and with less volume. Many companies are happy with the cost-saving alternatives introduced during the pandemic and are unlikely to go back to travelling.

Most of my free time is spent reading. The last great thing I read was The Idiot by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Even though it was written in the 1860s, I still feel that I can meet all the characters he described in the novel in my everyday life and feel the same way he felt. He’s quite timeless in that way. Of course, I also enjoyed The New Buffettology which looks at the techniques Warren Buffet used to invest.

I thoroughly enjoyed the TV series Suits. My favorite character was Harvey Specter, but I also felt that Louis Litt was a very relatable character. When I work I like to listen to classical operas such as Mozart.

Other than that, I love travelling with my friends. It doesn’t matter what the destination is, but the company you have and the experiences you leave with.

I’m not a very organized person [laughs]. I try to be when I have to, using to-do lists and the sort, but overall I just like everything to flow naturally and not have certain times to think or do things. If I’m working on a research note for example, I don’t always have a clear idea of where it’s going to go. As I write, my scattered thoughts organize themselves and I’m not afraid of adding last minute ideas. I feel that not being rigid makes me more creative.

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The EGX30 fell 1.1% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 1.2 bn (18.7% below the 90-day average). Regional investors were net buyers. The index is up 4.5% YTD.

In the green: MM Group (+3.0%), EDBE (+1.7%) and Heliopolis Housing (+1.6%).

In the red: Abu Qir Fertilizers (-5.1%), Ezz Steel (-2.9%) and Cleopatra (-2.8%).