Nigerian Equities market opens the week Bearish… ASI Trims 0.2%

The domestic equities market closed in the red as the ASI shed 16bps to settle at 27,630.56 points due to price depreciation in MTNN (-4.0%), ETI (-9.6%) and UNILEVER (-8.0%). As a result, YTD performance worsened to -12.1% while market capitalisation fell by N21.7bn to N13.5tn. However, activity level improved as volume and value traded rose 4.1% and 44.0% to 194.8m units and N3.1bn respectively. The most active stocks by volume were FCMB (16.8m units), TRANSCORP (7.2m units) and ZENITH (4.7m units) while GUARANTY (N1.6bn), NESTLE (N406.0m) and ACCESS (N386.0m) led by value.

Sector performance was bullish as only the AFR-ICT index (-2.4%) closed in the negative territory as a result of price depreciation in MTNN (-4.0%). The Insurance (+1.9%) and Banking (+1.6%) indices appreciated, following buying interest in CONTINSURE (+9.5%) and LASACO (+7.1%) as well as GUARANTY (+5.8%) and ZENITH (+1.1%). Similarly, gains in NESTLE (+3.7%), FLOURMILLS (+2.1%), CCNN (+3.7%) and DANGCEM (+0.5%) pushed the Consumer Goods (+1.3%) and Industrial Goods (+0.9%) indices northward. Finally, the Oil & Gas index gained 0.4% as TOTAL (+7.9%) soared.

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) rose to 1.0x from 0.8x recorded in the previous session as 18 stocks gained relative to 18 losers. The top performing stocks  were CAP (+9.9%), CONTINSURE (+9.5%) and NPFMCRFBK (+9.1%) while JOHNHOLT (-9.8%), ETI (-9.6%) and UAC-PROP (-9.5%) led losers. We maintain our bearish stance for the market, although the current low prices of stocks present opportunities for bargain hunting.

Market Statistics Monday, 30th September 2019

Source: Afrinvest