Equities market reverses previous week’s loss as index rebounds 2.49%
The Nigerian equities market rebounded at the week ended 6th October, 2017, as the ASI closed higher to completely reverse previous week’s loss.
The market had started the holiday-shortened week on Tuesday, with a negative performance that pulled ASI -0.38 percent lower, largely due to losses recorded by Dangote Cement, Nigerian Breweries and PZ Cussons that fell 1.40, 1.82 and 6.81 per cent respectively.
Specifically, the sell-off in PZ was on the back of the not-so-impressive Q1 scorecard wherein it posted pre-tax and post-tax losses of N181 million and N123m respectively.
Robust investor interest in fundamentally sound large cap counters across sectors such as Dangote Cement, Wapco, Zenith Bank, Guaranty, UBA, Guinness, Nestle, Nigerian Breweries, Seplat and Total led to the bulls resurfacing on Wednesday, with gains extending till Friday.
Overall, the All-Share Index advanced by 2.49 per cent to 36,320.93 points, improving the YtD return to 35.15 per cent.
Sectoral performance during the week ended mostly in green, except the Insurance index, which fell 1.21 percent solely from profit-taking in the shares of Continental Reinsurance that lost -12.00 per cent last week.
The Industrial Goods and Banking indices recorded the largest gains of 6.15 per cent and 3.17 per cent respectively, as demand for the shares of WAPCO (+13.08%), DANGCEM (+2.17%), UBA (+9.26%), and ZENITHBANK (+6.88%) was robust during the week.
In the same vein, the Oil &Gas and Consumer Goods indices posted positive returns of 1.80 percent and 1.42 percent w/w), as investors hunt bargain in the shares of SEPLAT (+4.97%), TOTAL (+4.33%), GUINNESS (+3.67%), and NB (+3.03%).
Market breadth remained strong, closing positive with 38 gainers (previously 32) – led by CI Leasing; that added 19.63per cent. 26 losers (previously 32) were led by MRS that fell 14.13 per cent, while 107 equities remained unchanged same as 107 equities recorded in the preceding week.
Total volume traded increased by 12.60 per cent, with FCMB, Diamond Bank and FBNH accounting for 44.76 per cent of total market volume. In the same vein, total value of trades rose by 7.25 per cent, with Guaranty Bank, Zenith Bank, and NB accounting for 44.34 per cent of total value
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Worthy of note was the announcement made by the management of UBA that it has completed the process for the cancellation of the 2.08 billion shares in its Staff Share Investment Trust Scheme (SSIT) which had been hitherto crossed to the Bank, bringing the total outstanding shares to 34.19 billion.
Afolabi Adesola
