Buy interest in Dangote Cement drives Nigeria’s equities market up 0.22%

The Nigerian equities market recouped losses of the previous trading session as the all-share index rose 0.22 percent to close at 37,013.57 points while year-to-date gain expanded to 37.7 percent.

Tuesday’s positive performance was primarily on account of buying interest in DANGCEM (+0.9%), that without DANGCEM, market would have lost six basis points.

Accordingly, market capitalization gained N28.6 billion to settle at N12.8 trillion. However, activity level was mixed as volume fell 34.6% to close at 305.2 million units while value traded rose 0.1 percent to N2.9 billion.

Sector performance across board was mixed as two of five indices trended northwards, while two closed in the red and one flat. The industrial goods and banking indices were the day’s gainers, up 0.5 percent apiece, on the back of gains in DANGCEM (+0.9%), ZENITH (+0.4%) and GUARANTY (+0.7%).

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The consumer goods index led losers, down 0.7 percent due to profit taking in INTBREW (-9.3%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.6%). Similarly, price depreciation in MOBIL (-5.0%) dragged the oil & gas index to record a loss of 0.2 percent.

Investor sentiment further strengthened as market breadth (advancers/decliners ratio) improved to 1.3x from 1.2x recorded yesterday.

The best performing stocks were DIAMOND (+5.2%), UPL (+4.8%) and NEM (+4.6%) while the worst performers were INTBREW (-9.3%), LINKASSURE (-5.0%) and MORISON (-5.0%).

Given the day’s performance and improved market breadth, analysts say they expect market performance and sentiment in the short term to stay positive as investors continue to react to favourable developments in the oil market and positive outlook for earnings.