Equities market bearish as NGX-ASI declines by 0.12%
Nigeria’s equities market closed bearish on Friday as investors sold off ARADEL (-9.09%), NB (-3.33%), Lafarge (-2.84%), Transcorp (-0.58%), and 11 others. All-Share Index (ASI) lost 118.93 points, down 0.12%, closing at 101,129.09 points from 101,248.02 points in the previous session.
Investors lost N72.09bn as Market capitalisation dropped to N61.30trn, bringing the year-to-date return to 35.25%.
The market breadth closed positively at 0.32x, with 37 gainers against 15 losers and 68 unchanged equities. UACN topped the gainers’ list, while Multiverse topped the losers’ list. Notably, UACN, NAHCO, AFRIPRUD and UNILEVER traded above their 52-week high today at N30.25, N46.10, N17.35 and N30.00, while MULTIVERSE traded below its 52-week low of N5.10 at N4.60.
At the end of the last weekday of trading , a total of 513,564,045 shares in 11,554 deals, corresponding to a market value of NGN 15,888,291,461.33, were traded. Compared with the previous NGX trading day (Thursday, December 19), today’s data shows 28% improvement in volume, 7% decline in turnover, but 13% improvement in deals. The current market capitalization of the Nigerian Stock Exchange is NGN 61.3 trillion.
In the aggregate, 125 NGX listed equities participated in trading, ending with 39 gainers and 15 losers. UAC of Nigeria led the gainers with 10% share price appreciation closing at NGN 30.25 per share, followed by Honeywell Flour Mill (+10%), Universal Insurance Company (+10%) and Learn Africa (+9.92%).
On the losing side, Multiverse Mining & Exploration came out last with an end-of-day price depreciation of 9.8% at NGN 4.60 per share, followed by Aradel Holdings (-9.09%), International Energy Insurance (-8.13%) and Wapic Insurance (-4.49%). Zenith Bank recorded the highest volume of 60.4 million traded shares, followed by United Bank for Africa (43.5m), Sterling Bank (43.3m) and Universal Insurance Company (28.3m).
Regarding the performance of NGX market indices, the benchmark NGX All-Share Index (ASI) pared 118.93 (-0.12%) points to close at 101,129.09, representing a 1-week gain of 1.76%, a 4-week gain of 3.37%, and an overall year-to-date gain of 35.25%.
Other remarkable indices that performed were the NGX Top 30 Index (+0.18%; +0.54% 1WK; +33.57% YTD), NGX Banking Index (+1.66%; +3.23% 1WK; +19.45% YTD), NGX Insurance Index (+1.05%; +8.83% 1WK; +92.49% YTD), NGX Consumer Goods Index (+1.03%; +2.92% 1WK; +47.58% YTD), NGX Pension Index (+0.86%; +1.77% 1WK; +36.23% YTD), and NGX Oil & Gas Index (+0.31%; +0.99% 1WK; +160.12% YTD).
