Expensive nostalgia

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TONIGHT

THIS EVENING: PMI inches down again in March as EGP + inflation weigh on private-sector activity

Good afternoon, ladies and gents, and happy hump day. We’re looking at a Goldilocks news day so far — not quite a slow cycle, but nowhere near a torrential downpour — which gives us hope that the Ramadan news slowdown might be on its way.

THE BIG STORY TODAY

Private sector activity deteriorates again in March: The contraction in Egypt’s non-oil private sector accelerated in March as the depreciation of the EGP, high inflation, and import restrictions continued to weigh on demand, according to S&P Global’s purchasing managers' index (pdf). The PMI reading inched down to 46.7 from 46.9 in February, making March the 28th consecutive month that private-sector activity has been in contraction.

THE BIG STORIES ABROAD

Two stories are capturing the imagination of the international business press this fine afternoon:

#1- The Donald is going to become the first-ever former or sitting US president to appear in court today, where he will be formally charged in a case relating to hush money payments to an adult film star to keep quiet about an alleged affair. Trump will be pleading not guilty to the charges — which include 34 felony counts — and maintains the case is politically motivated. The former president is currently the frontrunner Republican nominee for next year’s US presidential elections. The story is getting front-page play in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg.

#2- Credit Suisse Chairman Axel Lehmann apologized for the bank’s collapse at its last independent annual general meeting before its rival UBS takes over the Swiss bank in a USD 3.25 bn agreement. Credit Suisse execs had been bracing for protests from Swiss citizens at the AGM. Over three-quarters of Swiss voters want the two banks split up by new legislation, according to an opinion poll by the country’s biggest pollster, GfsBern. Many shareholders and advisors said they intend to vote against reelecting several board members, including Lehmann, before the AGM. At the same time, several board members decided to step down before the vote, leaving only seven members up for reelection. The story is also getting plenty of attention from Bloomberg,Reuters, and theFinancial Times.

** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

Private-equity consortium takes significant minority stake in Marcyrl:Development Partners International (DPI) and Amethis have acquired a “significant minority stake” in local pharma player Marcyrl.
Does Kuwait’s sovereign fund want to up its stake in AAIB? The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) has appointed advisors to look into upping its stake in Arab African International Bank (AAIB) to become the lender’s biggest shareholder.
Egypt’s external debt hit a record high in 2Q FY 2022-2023 following two quarters of declines, according to data published by the Planning Ministry.

? CIRCLE YOUR CALENDAR-

PSA #1- Start planning the next run of holidays:

Coptic Easter falls on Sunday, 16 April;
Sham El Nessim is on Monday, 17 April;
Eid El Fitr should land on or around Friday, 21 April (it’s still not clear what days will be official holidays);
Tuesday, 25 April, is Sinai Liberation Day, for which we’ll likely have a day off on Thursday, 27 April.

PSA #2- Need funding for a green project? You can now apply to the second round of the Smart Green Projects Initiative until the end of May, according to a Planning Ministry statement. Eligible projects must use technology solutions to address environmental issues, present evidence of feasibility or innovation, and provide a written acknowledgement that no awards have been received during the initiative’s first round, among other requirements. You can view the full list of criteria here and apply here.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- The mercury is expected to drop a couple of notches tomorrow, but it’s still going to be pleasantly warm, our favorite weather app suggests. Expect a daytime high of 28°C and a nighttime low of 14°C.

UFC + WWE set up a joint USD 21 bn company + The first-ever iPhone just sold for USD 40.3k

What do you get when you combine UFC and WWE? A USD 21 bn joint company: Ultimate Fighting Champions (UFC) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) are forming a joint publicly traded company, UFC owner Endeavor Group Holdings said in a statement yesterday. The new company, which has yet to be given an official name, “will be a USD 21+ bn live sports and entertainment powerhouse with a collective fanbase of more than a bn people,” WWE Executive Chairman Vincent McMahon — who will retain his title — said in the statement. Endeavor will hold a controlling 51% stake in the new joint company once the agreement closes, with WWE shareholders taking the remaining balance.

This is kind of a big thing in the world of wrestling: “WWE is considered a fruitful investment due to its broad range of appeal and large loyal fanbase, especially regarding social media interactions,” DW notes. The creation of a joint entity is expected to result in “significant growth across revenue areas including domestic and international media rights, ticket sales and yield optimization, event operations, sponsorship, licensing and premium hospitality,” Endeavor said in its statement.

Nostalgia costs a pretty penny sometimes: A first-generation iPhone (those came out in 2007, for those of you trying to rack your brains) was sold at auction for a cool USD 40.3k in a sale organized by Wright Auctions. That’s c.67x its original retail price of USD 599. The factory-sealed phone, which earned the title of Invention of the Year by Time magazine in 2007, was discontinued immediately after the iPhone 3G was released in June 2008. The phone is now functionally obsolete — considering it (along with all other iPhones produced before 2015) is incompatible with the latest operating system for iPhones — but it’s one of the “few tangible design objects that just change everything,” Wright Auctions President Richard Wright told the New York Times.

Rasheed: An action-packed mosalsal with some dubious-looking wigs

? ON THE TUBE TONIGHT-
(all times CLT)

Rasheed, which is loosely based on the Count of Monte Cristo, gets to the action right from the start: The show — starring Mohamed Mamdouh and Reham Abdel Ghafour — opens with the protagonist being wrongfully accused of the theft and murder of his employer on the day of his wedding, landing him in prison. Rasheed’s woes multiply while he serves his time when he discovers that his father — who had been caring for his son — passed away and that his son was transferred to an orphanage and later runs away. As his tragic story spreads, a powerful and influential inmate, who is also serving a life sentence, befriends Rasheed and promises that they will both escape. Flash forward and Rasheed is mysteriously wealthy, has longer hair (we can’t get over the wig), and is finally reunited with his son. He sadly discovers that he is illiterate and is making a living by working as a street-smart drugdealer. With his years of loss and betrayal brewing, Rasheed and his son plot their vengeance against all who had a hand in his incarceration.

⚽ Al Masry is playing host to Zamalek in a difficult match in the Egyptian Premier League’s gameweek 22 at 9:15pm tonight. The White Knights are currently in fifth place in the league with 33 points — just three points away from the fourth spot — while Al Masry is in ninth place with 28 points. Also kicking off at 9:15pm: Aswan v Smouha and El Dakhleya v Pharco.

Over in the English Premier League, Chelsea and Liverpool will hit the pitch at 9pm tonight. Chelsea lost to Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge stadium on Saturday, leading Graham Potter to step down from his position as the club’s head coach, while the Reds suffered a 4-1 defeat against defending champions Man City at Etihad stadium. Both Chelsea and Liverpool are having a rough run this season, with Chelsea in the 11th spot in the league with 38 points, just four points behind Liverpool, which is currently ranked eighth.

Other Premier League matches tonight (all at 8:45pm): Leicester City v Aston Villa, Bournemouth v Brighton, and Leeds v Nottingham Forest.

Join the fierce competition in the Enterprise Fantasy League by clicking this link or entering the code 8o4sut.

Juventus clashes with Inter Milan in the first leg of the Coppa Italia semi-final at 9pm tonight. The second leg is scheduled for Wednesday, 26 April.

And in the Bundesliga quarter-final round tonight:

Eintracht Frankfurt v Union Berlin (6pm)
Bayern Munich v SC Freiburg (8:45pm)

Ramadan is nearly at its halfway point — can you cover 100 km before the month is over? Participate in the Trifactory’sRamadan Virtual Running Challenge and try to run (or walk) 100 km by the end of the month. Proceeds from participants’ tickets will be donated directly to Misr El Kheir for its annual Ramadan campaign to feed less fortunate families.

Get moving after iftar with Trifactory’s Relay Run tomorrow in Palm Hills Club, 6 October. Call up four buddies for a 2-hour (non-konafa-related) competition to run as many laps as possible. This event is happening from 9-11pm. Visit Trifactory’swebsite to register.

Dina El-Wedidi will be performing tomorrow at the Cairo Opera House at 9:30pm. Tickets are available here.

Don’t miss Massar Egbari this weekend: The band will put on an acoustic performance on Friday, 7 April, at the Cairo Opera House starting from 9:30 pm.

Want to make new friends in the great outdoors?Head over to the Wadi Degla Protectorate this Friday, 7 April with your food in hand and join others gathering for iftar or sohour. The event is organized by Backpacker.

For the young and not so young, Goha fe Rawabet performed by ACT Theatre Group puts on a show adapting Goha’s famous anecdotes, along with other short scenes from Egyptian folklore with enduring messages. The production will kick off next Sunday, 9 April, with shows on Monday, 10 April and Tuesday, 11 April. Ticket proceeds will go towards public sector children’s hospitals. For more information, check out the event’s Facebook page, and for reservations through Ticketsmarche click here.

Looking for an Easter activity for your little ones? Join Bookly Ever After next Monday, 10 April in Maadi. To register for the event and for more details click here.

Expose yourself to some art and culture and walk around central Cairo: Qahrawya are organizing two separate “iftour” (iftar tour) events next month, which entail an art walking tour after sitting down for iftar together. The tours include one in Zamalek on Saturday, 8 April and one in downtown Cairo on Saturday, 22 April, both starting at 5:30pm.

Catch Medhat Saleh on Wednesday, 12 April at 9:30pm at the Cairo Opera House as performs some of his hits along with Arabic favorites.

Hazem Shaheen, one of the Middle East’s best oud players,will be performing on Friday, 14 April at 9pm at Rawabet Art Space. To book tickets check out the event’s Facebook page.

Enjoy Egyptian Project’s bedazzling live performance at Skas restaurantover sohour on Friday, 14 April. For more information or to reserve click here.

Learn more about popular Egyptian folk sayings at a unique location on Saturday, 15 April at 8pm in MASQ - Maq’ad of Sultan Qaitbey. Through storytelling with Nesma Medhat, a director, author, and founder of several projects focused on reviving Egyptian folklore, you will be guided through Egyptian heritage using a unique method.

Have a laugh at BigBang’s stand-up comedy night at Room Art Space and Cafe in New Cairo on Saturday, 15 April at 8:30pm with the performance starting at 9pm. For more details about the line-up and tickets check out their Facebook event page.

Catch Irtigalia on Sunday, 16 April for a night of improvisation at Room Art Space and Cafewhere the Irtigalia performers take their direction from you, the audience. To book tickets check out their event pagefor more information.

An Unnecessary Womanby Rabih Alameddine is the story of Lebanon in disguise.Aaliyah, an aging Lebanese woman who has remained stoic in a world that is going through tumultuous change, decides to share her life story. From her humble beginnings to her impotent marriage (and eventual divorce at 20) and life during the civil war, we see the character of Lebanon transform as she tries to fend for herself and protect her kingdom — an apartment full of her favorite books and Arabic translations of them that she will never publish. The first-person narrative cleverly takes us from epoch to epoch as Aaliyah’s seemingly simple life bears an adventurous interior: From an affair with a civil war general, to defending her home using a gun, through to her managing her difficult relationship with her mother and brothers, we are exposed to Lebanese culture, literary quotes, and moments of high humor.

What the markets are doing on 4 April, 2023

The EGX30 fell 0.3% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 2.10 bn. Foreign investors were net sellers. The index is up 16.4% YTD.

In the green: Madinet Nasr Housing (+6.5%), Rameda Pharma (+4.8%) and Credit Agricole Egypt (+4.6%).

In the red: Sidi Kerir Petrochemicals (-2.8%), Eastern Company (-2.7%) and AMOC (-2.5%).

Meet our founder of the week: Ahmed Shalaby, co-founder and sales director, 4a Nutrition

OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK- Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Ahmed Shalaby (LinkedIn), co-founder and sales director of 4a Nutrition, the business behind Lino Oats.

My name is Ahmed Shalaby and I’m the co-founder and sales director of 4a Nutrition, the business that provides you with Lino Oats and all its products. Our business is mainly focused on providing food with high nutritional value, such as oats.

I studied pharmacy at Modern Sciences and Arts University and had initially planned to continue in the family business, which owns a chain of pharmacies. As 4a Nutrition, we had begun with just one product, one packing machine, and four employees (myself and my co-founders). Today, we have a team of 160 employees, our own factory, and six production lines.

Eight years ago, while I was in university, my four partners and I were looking for an affordable nutritional gym product as the items available were out of our budgets. As we did our research, we were surprised that we couldn’t find affordable local options. Then we discovered oats. We were impressed to find value in oatmeal but we also struggled to find it in supermarkets. Realizing that it was considered a niche product that very little of the Egyptian market knew about, we came up with the idea of putting this wholesome product on the shelves.

As 20-something-year olds we had several advantages: We were young and without familial obligations — but the flipside was that we had no capital or experience. In fact, one of our favorite memories was that one of the founders was under 21 and had to be represented by his father when we registered the company.

We owe our success to our families; they provided us with the capital to make our business idea a reality. They also offered us a space — a desk in an office veranda — as our first official office. My father played an essential role in helping set up our business — he provided us with storage space in his pharmacies to stow our products, while another one of our family members gave us a floor in his factory to install our first production line.

Our first investor surfaced 1-2 years after we had been in business, and it was a friend of ours who was very impressed with our progress. But that was not the moment we realized we were succeeding; the turning point was when we saw our product on display at Alfa Supermarket in Maadi. I remember buying the product and taking a selfie as I held the receipt and realizing what we had accomplished.

Another sign of success was hiring more employees to join the Lino family. We realized that not only were we growing, but we were changing people’s lives; households were being supported from the salaries that we were providing, which made us very attached to our employees. We are proud to say that we still retained some of our earliest staff members who have been part of our team since we started eight years ago.

One of the difficulties we face is being our own cheerleaders. Navigating the current economic climate, aside from the daily hardships, is tough. We began our business at a very young age and we had a lot to learn. I was studying pharmacy at the onset and there were so many business and sales concepts that I learned through trial and error. We learned from the most unusual situations — one lesson I received was from the owner of a small retailer on how sales’ representatives can scam their employers.

Like all businesses, the devaluation hit us hard, but unlike much larger companies, we were able to sail through it by being adaptable — we scratched plans, reviewed others, and added some new ones to meet market demands. We made decisions such as looking for more local ingredients and exporting more to increase our USD revenue stream, among others. Today, we are exporting to the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Sudan, Morocco, Mauritius, Madagascar, Tunisia, and Palestine.

Another lesson that we learned is to always be aligned as a team and to understand the importance of a leader to keep us on track. In our business model, we each have very clear roles and responsibilities and we rely on each other to succeed. Conflicts are natural and necessary — we all know that we resolve conflicts privately by following the written policies within our business to ensure that relationships are not ruined and objectives are reached.

As an FMCG business, we would like to see some more regulation on food products, as several new market entrants are on shelves and do not have correct nutritional information on their labels. We would also love to be able to grow oats in Egypt; we currently import our product into the country. Growing oats in Egypt is possible but we still need an oat mill; the nearest ones are in South Africa and the UAE. Our vision is to have one in Egypt as we foresee that we would be providing better value and more competitive pricing for our clients, locally and internationally, if we grew and milled our own oats.

If we hadn’t started 4a Nutrition I would probably have been in the family business, which is owning and running pharmacies. Definitely following that career would have given me more time for family, but I have to accept that being a founder gives me some flexibility, which comes at the price of being available consistently and often having longer days than the average employee.

When it comes to books, my partners and I have a book club of sorts. Most of our reading is about business as many of us did not study it in university. We are currently reading Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine which we strongly recommend to others to read.

THE ENTERPRISE ENTERTAINMENT CALENDAR

APRIL

16 April (Sunday): Coptic Easter.

17 April (Monday): Sham El Nessim.

21-26 April (Friday-Wednesday): LaLiga Egypt Football Camp, Xanadu Hotel, Makadi Bay, Hurghada.

22 April (Saturday): Eid El Fitr (TBC).

25 April (Tuesday): Sinai Liberation Day.

27 April (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Sinai Liberation Day (TBC).

MAY

1 May (Monday): Labor Day.

1 May (Monday): Backstreet Boys at 7pm, ZED East, New Cairo.

4 May (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Labor Day (TBC).

12-15 May (Friday-Monday): Egypt Fashion Week.

JUNE

10 June (Saturday): Thanaweya Amma examinations begin.

28 June-2 July (Wednesday-Sunday): Eid El Adha (TBC).

30 June (Friday): June 30 Revolution Day.

JULY

18 July (Tuesday): Islamic New Year.

20 July (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Islamic New Year (TBC).

23 July (Sunday): Revolution Day.

27 July (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Revolution Day.

SEPTEMBER

26 September (Tuesday): Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (TBC).

28 September (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (TBC).

OCTOBER

6 October (Friday): Armed Forces Day.

13 October- 20 October (Friday-Friday): The sixth edition of El Gouna Film Festival (GFF).

EVENTS WITH NO SET DATE

2023: The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum.

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