Profit booking sell-offs in Dangote Cement dip Nigeria equities index 1.2%

A raft of sell-offs in Nigeria’s most capitalised company, Dangote Cement Plc., led to a reversal of fortune for the country’s equities index, which went down 1.2 percent at the close of Monday’s trading.

At the close of the day’s trading, benchmark index closed at 37,980.67 points while year-to-date (YTD) gain trimmed to 41.2 percent. Market capitalisation lost N162.1 billion to settle at N13.5 trillion.

Equally, activity level softened as volume and value traded declined 52.5 percent and 58.4 percent to 202.0 million units and N3.8 billion respectively.

The price loss in DANGCEM (-4.17%) was evidently huge to the extent that without it market performance would have been positive.

Amid the southward trend at the market, the banking index emerged the lone gainer on the day, up 4 percent against the backdrop of price appreciations in UBN (+4.9%), GUARANTY (+0.5%) and UBA (+0.8%).

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Performance across other sectors was largely bearish as three of five indices trended southwards, with one closing flat.

The industrial goods index led laggards, down 2.0 percent consequent on sell-offs in DANGCEM (-4.2%). The consumer goods index trailed, falling 0.7 percent on account of price depreciation in INTBREW (-5.0%), FLOURMILL (-2.7%), and NASCON (-4.9%), while losses in NEM (-2.8%) and AIICO (-3.8%) dragged the insurance index 0.5 percent lower. The oil & gas index closed flat.

Investor sentiment measured by market breadth (advancers/decliners ratio) improved, albeit still negative, to 0.9x from 0.4x recorded the previous Friday as 17 stocks advanced against 18 decliners.

Top performing stocks on the day were PRESCO (+8.8%), UAC-PROP (+5.7%) and CHAMPION (+5.0%) while the worst performers were CADBURY (-5.9%), ETERNA (-5.0%) and INTBREW (-5.0%).