Equities Market extends gain to third consecutive day… NSE ASI up 45bps

The Nigerian equities market closed the week positive as the All Share Index (ASI) rose 45bps to settle at 38,522.14 points while YTD gain expanded to 43.3 per cent. Accordingly, market capitalisation grew by N61.0 billion to N13.7 trillion. The positive close was majorly driven by price appreciations in DANGCEM (+0.8%), SEPLAT (+5.0%) and ACCESS (+3.0%). However, activity level was mixed as volume traded fell 52.4 per cent to 204.5 million units while value traded advanced 1.1 per cent to N1.5 billion.

Performance across sectors was largely bullish as 4 of 5 indices closed in the green. The Oil & Gas index appreciated the most, up 2.6 per cent due to price appreciation in SEPLAT (+5.0%). The Insurance index followed suit, adding 1.0 per cent on the back of buy interest in NEM (+4.9%) and LINKASSURE (+4.6%). Similarly, the Industrial Goods and Banking indices rose 0.5% apiece as DANGCEM (+0.8%) and ACCESS (+3.0%) recorded gains. On the flipside, the Consumer Goods index was the lone loser, down 0.2% due to losses in UNILEVER (-7.3%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.4%).

Market breadth (advancers/decliners ratio) which measures investor sentiment improved to 4.0x from 1.8x recorded yesterday as 24 stocks advanced against 6 stocks that declined. The top performing stocks were CADBURY (+10.2%), SEPLAT (+5.0%) and VITAFOAM (+5.0%) while UNILEVER (-7.3%), UPL (-5.0%) and NPFMCRFBK (-3.8%) were the worst performers. In the coming week, we anticipate a largely positive performance on the back of year-end portfolio rebalancing by fund managers.

Market Statistics Friday, 22nd December 2017
Market Cap (N’bn)                                            13,708.7
Market Cap (US$’bn)                                              44.8
NSE All-Share Index                                        38,522.14
Daily Performance %                                                 0.5
Week Performance %                                                0.2
YTD Performance %                                                43.3
Daily Volume (Million)                                             204.5
Daily Value (N’bn)                                                       1.5
Daily Value (US$’m)                                                    5.0