Nigeria bourse gains 0.87% on last trading day of 2019

The Nigerian equities market ended trading for year 2019 on Tuesday on a bullish posture with the All-Share Index appreciating further by 0.87 per cent.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the index rose by 232.73 points or 0.87 per cent to close at 26,842.07 against 26,609.34 posted on Monday.

Consequently, the nation’s bourse year-to-date loss stood at 14.6 per cent.

Similarly, the market capitalisation which opened at N12.846 trillion inched N112 billion to close at N12.958 trillion.

The upturn was impacted by gains recorded in medium and large capitalised stocks, amongst which are; Seplat, Stanbic IBTC Holdings, Lafarge Africa, Guaranty Trust Bank and Okomu Oil.

Analysts at Afrinvest Ltd said: “We believe the positive performance was partly driven by portfolio rebalancing activities by asset and portfolio managers.

“In the coming year, we expect the local bourse to resume trading on a weak note as investors remain averse to the equities market.

“However, in the near term, we anticipate that the impact of the low-yield environment in the fixed income space due to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) policy on Open Market Operations (OMO) could drive buying interest in undervalued stocks.”

Market breadth closed positive with 24 gainers and 13 losers.

AXA Mansard Insurance, Vitafoam Nigeria and SEPLAT recorded the highest price gain of 10 per cent each, to close at N1.98, N4.40 and N657.80 per share, respectively.

GlaxoSmithKline followed with a gain of 9.91 per cent to close at N6.10, while Cornerstone Insurance improved by 9.76 per cent to close at 45k per share.

Conversely, UPDC Real Estate Investment Trust (UPDCREIT) led the losers’ chart in percentage terms with a loss of 9.57 per cent to close at N4.25 per share.

Cutix followed with a decline of 8.28 per cent to close at N1.33, while Lasaco Assurance lost 7.41 to close at 25k per share.

Chams declined by 5.71 per cent to close at 33, while Africa Prudential shed 4.31 per cent to close at N4 per share.

Also, the volume of shares transacted closed higher as investors bought and sold 1.05 billion shares valued at N5.49 billion in 2,445 deals.

This was in contrast with a total of 382.81 million shares worth N7.19 billion traded in 3,312 on Monday.

Transactions in the shares of Omoluabi Mortgage Bank topped the activity chart with 796.45 million shares valued at N438.05 million.

Access Bank came second with 47.31 million shares worth N471.37 million, while United Bank for Africa traded 37.39 million shares valued at N267.66 million.

Zenith Bank sold 29.79 million shares worth N553.95 million, while Dangote Cement accounted for 16.78 million shares worth N2.38 billion.