Media Comment - 05 March 2002

M-Cell rating affirmed by Merrill Lynch

Merrill Lynch affirmed its buy rating for M-Cell, but saw a possible future rerating for the cellular phone company on its African operations and subscriber growth . Merrill Lynch has a long term strong buy on the stock. Their analysts believe that M-Cell offers an attractive buy opportunity with investors getting five African operations valued at 455c, for free, along with the local operations. The African operations (Nigeria, Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda, Swaziland) is said to offer excellent growth prospects, with some financial risks to the holding company. The major catalyst for a M-Cell rerating could be further successes by MTN in Nigeria and Cameroon, and evidence of sustained subscriber growth. Merrill Lynch cautioned that enthusiasm for domestic telecoms stocks were constrained by concerns of an interest rate rise and longer term growth concerns.