Bullish sentiment sustained in Nigerian equities market

Today’s, the equities market closed in the positive territory as the ASI rose 0.2% to 26,359.27 points following gains posted by NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+8.1%), SEPLAT (+9.3%) and DANGCEM (+0.3%). Consequently, YTD loss moderated to -16.1% while investors’ wealth appreciated as market capitalisation increased by 21.7bn to N12.8tn. In the same vein, activity level strengthened as both volume and value traded advanced 121.7% and 275.3% to 347.8m units and N6.8bn respectively. The most active stocks by volume were UBA (21.7m units), MTNN (21.3m units) and TRANSCORP (11.1m units) while MTNN (N2.7bn), ZENITH (N1.8bn) and GUARANTY (N980.5m) led by value.  

Performance across sectors was mixed as 3 of 6 sectors under our coverage gained. The Banking index the led losers, driven by price depreciation in GUARANTY (-2.4%) and FBNH (-0.9%) while the Industrial Goods and AFR-ICT indices lost 0.6% and 0.1% respectively due to losses in WAPCO (-0.8%) and MTNN (-0.8%). On the flip side, the Oil & Gas index led the gainers’ chart, up 4.3% following buying interest in SEPLAT (+9.8%) while the Consumer Goods index advanced 1.6% due to price uptick in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+8.1%) and FLOURMILL (+1.4%). Similarly, the Insurance index rose 0.2% on account of gains in CHIPLC (+8.1%), AIICO (+2.9%) and LASACO (+4.0%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) rose to 1.6x from 0.7x recorded in yesterday’s session as 18 stocks gained against 11 decliners. The top gainers were NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+8.1%), CHIPLC (+8.1%) and UPL (+7.4%) while UNITYBANK (-8.5%), LAWUNION (-8.2%) and UNIONDAC (-8.0%) were the top losers. Although, we have seen slight gains in the equities market recently, we do not expect this to be sustained as investors’ maintain a risk-off approach.

Market Statistics Thursday, 31st October, 2019 

Source: Afrinvest