Stock market rebounds 0.7% as investors re-focus on company earnings 

Investors at Nigeria’s equities market, Tuesday, returned their focus to earnings of listed companies, causing a 0.7 percent rebound in the local bourse, in contrast to 1.6 percent lost on Monday due to the uncertainty the election postponement brought.

buying interests in bellwether stocks such as Zenith Bank (+5.6%) which reported an 11.3 percent growth in profit today, Guaranty Trust Bank, GTB (+3.3%) and UBA (+4.6%) led to an appreciation in the  All Share Index (ASI) which rose 0.7 percent to 32,406.18 points.

Consequently, market capitalisation increased N80.6 billion to N12.1 trillion while year-to-date gain settled at 3.1 percent.

Activity level also strengthened as volume and value traded improved 55.4 percent and 23.7 percent to 361.8 million units and N4.2 billion respectively.

Topping the day’s trade by volume were Transcorp with an exchange of 120.2 million units, Zenith Bank with 37.3 million units and FBN Holdings with 31.2m units.  On the other hand, the top traded stocks by value were Dangote Cement (N951.6m), Zenith (N925.5m) and Guaranty Trust Bank (N778.0m).

Performance across sectors was bullish as 4 of 5 indices trended northwards. The Banking index led gainers, up 3.0 percent following bargain hunting in Zenith (+5.6%) and GTB (+3.3%).

The Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices trailed, advancing 0.7 percent and 0.3 percent respectively on the back of gains in Oando (+6.3%), Dangote Sugar (+4.1%) and Unilever (+0.5%).

The Insurance index trailed, up 0.2 percent following investor interests in Custodian and Allied Insurance (+8.3%) and Cornerstone Insurance (+5.0%). On the flip side, the Industrial Goods index shed 0.2 percent on account of sell offs in Dangote Cement (-0.4%) and First Aluminium (-10.0%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 1.1x from 0.3x recorded Monday as 16 stocks advanced against 14 decliners.

Japaul Oil (+9.5%), Sovereign Insurance (+9.5%) and ABC Transport (+9.1%) were the day’s best performing stocks while First Auminium (-10.0%), Transcorp (-9.7%) and Wema Bank (-9.7%) declined the most.

Despite the day’s rebound in market performance, investors are advised by market analysts at Afrinvest to trade cautiously as an expectation of sell pressures is expected to return to the market by close of the week – eve of the rescheduled presidential elections.