Mubasher: The National Bank of Kuwait’s (NBK) stock is expected to see additional $285 million inflows during the next two months until mid-March, increasing the expected total inflows of Kuwaiti equities to about $500 million, EFG Hermes said.

If upgraded on the MSCI index, the inflows will increase to $1.3 billion instead of $663 million next May, if NBK’s stock maintains the free-float rate at 94.5%, the Egyptian investment bank said.

Over the next 30 days, Hermes expected NBK’s stock to receive inflows worth $32 million until mid-February, due to the increase of the relative weight on the MSCI Frontier Markets 100 Index, bringing its total expected foreign investment inflows to $1.617 billion in five months.

EFG Hermes previously forecast that Boursa Kuwait to receive foreign inflows valued at $2.4 billion during the next two years until May 2020 after the bourse’s inclusion into global emerging markets indexes.

During the first nine months of 2018, Kuwait's biggest lender posted an increase of 14.3% in profits to KWD 272.4 million from KWD 238.4 million in the same period last year.