Stocks: A growth market with pockets of yield

Let’s say it straight away: the stock market, overall, is not a yield market and never has been! One can nuance that by considering that it contains pockets of yield.

Year after year, the market has always delivered a very average yield. The rate sits on average around 3%, with at best a yield of 3.5%.

In 2026, listed companies that announced their dividend amounts should distribute 25.2 billion dirhams for the 2025 fiscal year.

On a like-for-like basis, the dividend is up 26% compared with the previous year, “a level below the average observed over the last decade”, according to Attijari Global Research.

That said, in terms of payout effort, the market’s distribution rate calculated on a consolidated basis stands at 54.2%. Companies are still favoring the path of growth.

In other words, “they siphon off part of the profits to allocate them to retained earnings or use them as internal financing capacity to invest in other projects.

This allows financing the investment strategy while avoiding excessive recourse to bank or bond debt and thus inflating the debt ratio”, explains a head of analysis at a research bureau. All the more so in recent years and those to come.

Indeed, Morocco is engaged in several strategic projects, whether related to upcoming sporting events, notably the 2030 World Cup, or not.

Projects relating to mobility—both rail and road—stadium construction, strengthening hotel capacity…, to which are added structuring programs linked to water sovereignty, including the 130 billion dirhams mobilized by the Taqa-Nareva-ONEE-FM6I consortium, which includes both seawater desalination and low-carbon electricity production and the development of green energy.

This, in addition to the establishment of various desalination plants, dams, hillside reservoirs, “water highways”…, projects for green hydrogen, electric batteries, etc.

“A set of strategic and structuring projects for the country whose sectors of activity are not necessarily represented on the Casablanca Stock Exchange, but which have effects on several listed companies”. This should further support their growth in the coming years and, consequently, their stock prices.

Moreover, market capitalization has increased by 70% since 2023, a growth pace faster than that of dividends. This has helped keep yield rates in the lower range.

A gap of at least 20 bps

The benchmark used to assess the attractiveness of stock-market yield remains the bond market.
Analysts are not unanimous on the reference rate. Some take 5-year Treasury bill rates, others look further and base themselves on the 10-year curve.

In both cases, the stock market’s yield is lower than those rates. Compared with the 5-year, a differential of 23 basis points is observed and 30 bps compared with the 10-year.

Arbitrage orientation remains in favor of the bond market, which continues to offer higher remunerations. Yet investors continue to show confidence in the stock market, given the growth potential displayed by several stocks.

With an average PE of 21x, the market still trades at acceptable and even interesting valuation levels, obviously for some names more than others.

It must be said, however, that not all listed stocks offer the same type of yield. Some sectors are more attractive than others.

According to AGR, among listed sectors offering the best yields are cements, which show a yield of 4.7% mainly supported by the increase in LafargeHolcim Morocco’s dividend to 96 DH (up 26 DH) and Cimar to 65 DH, versus 60 DH the previous year.

Meanwhile, the telecom sector (IAM) offers a yield of 4.2% thanks to the increase in its shareholder payout from 2.57 DH to 4 DH per share. Finally, financials offer a yield of 4.1%, which takes into account Eqdom’s return to dividend distribution (57 DH) and Maghrebail’s maintenance of a stable DPS at 53 DH.

At the same time, Salafin raised its DPS to 30 DH. In this configuration, Maroc Telecom alone accounts for 43% of the increase in the dividend mass with an additional 2.3 billion dirhams.

Meanwhile, 42 listed companies increased their dividend in 2025 versus only 3 companies that lowered it. Additionally, 10 listed companies kept payouts stable, while 14 will not distribute dividends for 2025.
Note that six listed companies have not yet announced their dividend amounts.

This is to say that despite an average yield rate that does not break ceilings, there are stocks that remain attractive if one considers yield alone.

Hence the interest in stock picking according to profile. But in any event, “the market will structurally be a growth market, at least until the end of 2028”, our source insists.

What boosted bond yields

This situation stems from the Treasury having stepped up its issuances since the start of the year, in addition to massive recourse to innovative financing amounting to about 43 billion dirhams.

This led to a drying up of liquidity in the market and therefore an upward orientation of bond yields, especially on the short end of the curve. Long-term rates quickly followed the trend.

Bond yields were until March significantly more attractive, with gaps up to 70 bps versus the stock market.

This situation lasted until the state treasurer received the inflows from the first tranche of corporate tax and calmed down after OCP’s international fundraising operation, which then lowered primary rates. The gap then narrowed sharply to levels around 30 bps.