The second straight day of gains on the local stock exchange were driven by investors’ interest in the equities of banking institutions listed on the Nigerian Exchange Limited.
The All-Share index closed at 67,353.23 basis points, up 0.04 percent from the previous day and maintaining its daily rise of 0.43 percent. Similar to this, at the end of trade, the market capitalization exceeded N37 trillion to N37.004 trillion.
The main forces behind the higher trend were buy pressure in the stocks of United Bank for Africa, Eterna, AccessCorp, GTCO, Zenith Bank, Fidelity, Mansard, and Eterna.
The number of shares traded increased from the previous day’s 377.97 million to 397.56 million units, for a total value of N4.66 billion, in 6,165 trades. The total number of stocks that were traded at the day’s session was 119.
As 19 companies saw gains vs 18 losses, the market breadth, which gauges investor mood, was low at 1.06x compared to its previous market breadth of 1.23x.
Guinea Insurance, whose shares increased 9.09% to end at N0.24, was at the top of the gainers’ leaderboard. On Tuesday, the insurance company offered 1,802,800,000 common shares of 50 Kobo each at a price of 50 Kobo per share on the NGX’s Daily Official List.
The extra shares came from a private placement by Guinea Insurance. The total number of issued and fully paid-up shares of Guinea Insurance Plc has now grown from 6,140,000,000 to 7,942,800,000 ordinary shares of 50 kobo each as a result of the listing of the additional shares.
Other gainers include oil firm, Eterna, whose shares gained 6.86 per cent to close at N14.80, Unity Bank’s shares closed at N0.96 after a gain of 5.49 per cent, Jaiz Bank rose by 5.26 per cent to close at N1.60 and Omatek’s shares appreciated by 4.55 per cent to close at N0.46.
Losers include Computer Warehouse Group whose shares dipped by 10 per cent to N8.55, RT Briscoe lost 8.77 per cent to close at N0.52, Africa Prudential Plc lost 7.14 per cent to close at N6.50 per unit, FTN Cocoa lost 6.29 per cent to close at N1.64 and Neimeth lost 6.06 per cent to close at N1.55 per unit.
A look at sectoral performance showed that it was largely bullish as three out of five sectors gained. The Banking, Insurance and Oil/Gas indexes led the gainers, advancing by 0.74 per cent, 0.27 per cent and 0.22 respectively. While the Industrial goods sector declined by 0.06 per cent and the Consumer Goods sector remained flat.
In terms of volume, Wema Bank emerged as the most actively traded stock, with 88.99 million shares worth N418.15bn changing hands in 65 deals.
This was followed by AccessCorp with 35.61 million units of shares valued at N598.49m traded in 429 exchanged, over 35.17 million units of UBA shares worth N659.13m were exchanged in 470 deals, Fidelity Bank had 33.41 million units of its shares valued at N279.51m traded in 222 deals and 23.421 million units of GTCO shares valued at N828.48m were traded in 361 deals.
