Equities Market Gains N596bn, Return Hits 26.6%
Positive momentum in the equities market has lifted the local bourse weight as investors gain about N595 billion this week. The surge was driven in part by buying interest in large-cap stocks, especially bargain hunting in Airtel Africa.
Recall that Airtel Africa has reduced volatility that has seen the Telecom Company’s share maintaining an uptrend after the share buyback programme. Ticker: AIRTELAF gained more than 20% in the last five days.
From 24%, the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) year to date return inched upward to 26.6% while market capitalisation gained ₦595.9 billion week on week to ₦29.2 trillion.
On Friday, the local bourse closed in the green territory despite profit-taking activities in heavyweights in the telecommunications and consumer goods sectors. Market data shows that the Nigerian Exchange All-Share Index advanced by 2.1% week on week to close at 54,085.30 points, according to Stockbrokers.
In its market note, Cordros Capital stock buyers said the positive performance this week was buoyed by foreign investors’ renewed interest in AIRTELAFRI which proved sufficient in offsetting losses in GUINNESS (-11.2%), NB (-10.0%), and MTNN (-4.8%).
However, activity levels were weaker than in the prior week, as trading volume and value declined by 39.4% and 14.5% week on week respectively. On Friday, the total volume dipped by 21.82 per cent while the total value spiked by 7.92 per cent. Approximately 208.09 million units valued at ₦5.52 billion were transacted in 4,898 deals.
FLOURMILL emerged as the most traded stock in terms of volume, accounting for 10.33 per cent of the total volume of trades, followed closely by GTCO (9.69%), FBNH (8.64%), TRANSCORP (6.72%), and ACCESSCORP (5.99%) to complete the top five on the volume chart.
AIRTELAFRI appeared as the most traded stock in value terms, with 42.44 per cent of the total value of trades on the exchange on Friday. With the recent decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s monetary policy committee to hike the MPR by 150bps, analysts at Cordros Capital said they are expecting negative sentiments to dominate market performance in the short term.
Nonetheless, traders think a short-term market correction will present opportunities for investors to make a re-entry into stocks with sound fundamentals and attractive dividend yields. Despite the positive close, all the sectors ended in a red.
Stockbrokers said market performance across sectors was broadly negative, following losses in the Insurance (-6.3%), Consumer Goods (-3.9%), Oil and Gas (-0.9%), Banking (-0.8%), and Industrial Goods (-0.7%) indices. # Equities Market Gains N596bn, Return Hits 26.6%
