Our comments and expectations
External backdrop. The S&P 500 is down for the third session in a row, moving away from record highs. On the index heatmap, the steepest declines were seen in the technology sector, particularly among semiconductor and hardware makers. The main sources of pressure remain inflation risks, rising US Treasury yields, and growing public debt. This morning Asian indices are notably in the red: the Kospi is down 5.8%, the CSI 300 — 2.9%, the Nikkei 225 — 3.2%, and the MSCI Emerging Markets index — 2.9%. S&P 500 futures are trading flat, while oil has slowed its rise and is around $91.6 per barrel.
KASE Index. KASE fell 0.6% yesterday. Technically, this is an important point, as quotes are no longer in local consolidation, but rather are showing a correction. So far its scale is small, and it may turn out that the lower boundary of the sideways trend lies lower, for example around 7,970 points, where the support level is now located. Therefore, it is still too early to talk about a trend reversal.
Index stocks. The largest decline was in Halyk Bank shares. Yesterday the company published its financials, and it can be said that this drop was a reaction to the results: by preliminary assessment, the report came in below expectations and was moderately negative. Net profit in 2Q26 fell 16.1% y/y to KZT 212.8bn, net interest income rose only 3% to KZT 324.3bn, net fee and commission income fell 13.1%, and provisions increased 32.8%. In summary, despite 4.1% growth in the loan book, interest income and net interest margin came under pressure due to tighter minimum reserve requirements and increased regulation of retail lending. Incidentally, rising regulatory pressure in Kazakhstan has already been affecting banks’ reporting more than once this year. It is important to note that the shares fell 3.7% yesterday, but are up 0.9% today, so from a technical standpoint we do not yet see a downside break of the upward trend line that has been forming since early July. It can be said that, technically, the quotes have so far gotten off with “minor damage.” The second-largest decliner was another bank — Kaspi.kz. On KASE the shares fell 2.5%, and on Nasdaq — 1%. We note that the picture for the ADS looks better than for the shares on KASE, where the reversal was more pronounced. Around KZT 44 300 the quotes will meet a horizontal support level. We also draw attention to the 1% decline in Kazatomprom GDRs yesterday, despite the fact that uranium quotes continue to rise and have already reached $88.2 for the nearest futures. In the local market, only Solidcore is still showing confident growth, having almost reached $9.8, which is already above our fundamental valuation. At the same time, investors should pay attention to the fact that gold is signaling a potential price correction.
FX. The dollar is showing a slight, but still an increase against the tenge today. Yesterday, the decline in USDKZT quotes stopped at the level of 459 tenge.
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