Nigeria bourse opens after being down 1.06% on sell-offs in large caps MTN, Dangote, BUA

Market activities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in Lagos will open today, Wednesday 13 May, 2020, after being dampened Tuesday by noticeable sell-offs in a number of large cap companies, including telecom giant, MTN Nigeria, and two cement behemoths, Dangote and BUA.

The sell-offs dragged down the market’s All-Share index by as much as 1.06 percent, closing at 23,695.90 points for the day. This pushed year-to-date loss further to -11.72 percent.

There was also lower activity level recorded across the two indicators of volume and value of traded stocks on the day as they posted declines of 24.85 percent and 5.63 percent respectively. A total of 155.74 million units were traded at a value of N1.67 billion.

Individual stock performances showed that large cap financial holding firm which has First Bank under its belt, FBNHolding, was the most traded by volume at 27,845,035 units, while Dangote Cement was the most traded by value at N350,310,117.10.

Other top traded stocks by volume on Tuesday were UACN with 16,620,712 units; Guaranty Trust Bank with 14,970,974 units; Zenith Bank with 9,172,306 units; and Mutual Benefit Insurance with 8,053,500 units.

Dangote Cement’s lead in terms of traded stock value was followed by Guaranty Trust Bank, which had its traded stocks valued at N314,694,393.90; MTN Nigeria’s traded units were valued at N265,474,945.20; Zenith Bank units were worth N138,342,173.50; and FBN Holdings units had a value of N133,591,821.50.

Investor sentiments measured by market breadth, according to analysts at Lead Capital, declined to 0.87x with 13 stocks gaining compared to 15, which recorded losses.

Sectoral performances showed that all major sub-indices recorded losses with the industrial index at -1.84 percent posting the highest for the day based on selloffs in the two cement giants, Dangote and BUA.

A 0.26 percent loss by the banking index resulted from selloffs in Access Bank and United Bank for Africa, while consumer goods index, closing relatively flat at 0.02 percent, was attributable to downturn in Guinness Nigeria stocks. The oil and gas index was unchanged.

The Nigerian bourse index of top 30 stocks, NSE 30 Index, fell by 1.15 percent following price plunge in MTN Nigeria, and the activities in the stocks of Dangote Cement and BUA Cement.