At the beginning of this week, selling pressure on 14 equities, including Nigerian Breweries, Airtel Africa, Stanbic IBTC, and Transcorp, caused equity investors to lose almost N500 billion. The Nigerian All-Share Index closed at 98,703.68 points, up from 99,587.25 points the previous session, after declining by 89 basis points due to negative trading.
Selling pressure in companies like AIRTELAFRI (-10.00%), STANBIC (-2.80%), TRANSCORP (-3.55%), NB (-4.30%), and 14 other stocks was the main cause of the market’s poor performance. In today’s session, AIRTELAFRI (-10.00%) led the losers, while GUINEAINS (+10.00%) topped the winners. This trailed behind an annual inflation rate of 33.20%, dragging the year-to-date return back to 32.00%.
Market activities ended on a mixed note. Stockbrokers observed that the volume traded declined by 5.56% to close at 421.73 million units while the value traded (N8.95 billion) increased by 26.10%. ACCESSCORP led the volume and value chart with 98.24 million units traded (23.29% of total volume) at a total value of N1.76 billion (19.7% of total value traded).
The market witnessed buying interest in banking names amidst a solid Q1 earnings performance. Gainers include GTCO (+7.61%), FBNH (+4.63%), ACCESSCORP (+3.16%), UBA (+0.78%), and ZENITH (+0.58%).
Sectoral performance was bullish, according to data from the local bourse. The data showed that out of the five indices, three closed positive. The banking index rose by +2.56%, and the insurance index popped up by 2.03%. Consumer goods gained 0.58%, followed by a 0.25% uptick in the industrial goods index.
The key indices gained reflected investors’ interest in GTCO (+7.61%), CORNERST (+10%), DANGSUGAR (+8.30%), and WAPCO (+6.54%), respectively. On the other hand, the oil and gas index closed flat. Overall, the equities market capitalisation of the Nigerian Exchange declined by N499.71 billion to close at N55.82 trillion.
