The Nigerian Equities market sustained its bullish performance in Monday’s trading session as the benchmark index rose 0.96 percent to close at 34,135.10 points as against the previous close of 33,810.56, boosting year-to-date returns to 27.0%.
Monday’s performance was driven by price appreciations in market heavyweights – DANGCEM (+2.4%), ETI (+7.1%), GUARANTY (+0.8%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+0.6%).
Consequently, investors gained N112.1bn in value as market capitalization rose to N11.8 trillion from N11.692 last Friday. Activity level however, softened as volume and value traded declined 2.2% and 8.9% to 482.5 million units and N5.7 billion respectively.
Volume traded decreased by 2.18% from 493.27 million to 482.52 million, while the total value of stock traded decreased by 8.90% from ₦6.24 billion to ₦5.68 billion in 5,771 deals.
The top traders were from the financial services sector, which led the activity chart with 400.12 million shares exchanging for ₦3.7 billion. Wema Bank, Guaranty Trust bank , Access bank, Transcorp, and Fidelity Bank were the most active stocks by volume.
Analysts at INVESTMENT ONE Financial Services, a Lagos-based investment outfit believe that “going by the way the market is surging there is still quite some room for banking stocks.”
The “banking sector has taken a beating in recent months beating down their valuations to fewer than 2x earnings. Some are still trading at par or just above their book values. However, there are some downside risks,” the analysts at Investment One said in a note on their website.
“Banks have been helped largely by forex gains without each the high non-performing loans they carry might have ravaged their earnings. This is why some of the banks have opted to raise quasi equity instead of an outright equity sale,” they further noted.
Meanwhile, Conglomerates came next in terms of volume of stocks traded with 32.771 million shares traded for ₦0.066 billion, Consumer Goods, Agriculture, Industrial Goods sectors followed in that order on the activity chart.
CCNN, Maybaker, Intbrew, AIICO and Skyebank emerged the highest price gainers on the chart, while CAP, Mobil, FO, FBNH and NAHCO topped the losers’ chart.
