NSE LIVE! Equities net N17b gain as investors scramble for banks

Banking stocks led Nigerian equities to a positive start this week, sustaining a modest rally that saw quoted equities closing last week with a gain of N26 billion.

Increased demand for banking stocks placed many banks in the buyers’ market, enabling the sellers to increase their prices.

With many banks dominating the advancing stocks and activities’ charts, investors appeared to be taking positions in banks ahead of the expected release of the financial statements of many banks by early February.

The All Share Index (ASI), the value-based common index that tracks prices at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), rose by 0.18 per cent from 26,325.93 points to close at 26,373.83 points. Aggregate market value of all quoted companies on the NSE rose correspondingly by N17 billion from N9.058 trillion to close at N9.075 trillion.

The NSE Banking Index was the only gainers among the sectoral indices on Monday, rising by 1.3 per cent. Three banks- Zenith Bank, Access Bank and Guaranty Trust Bank had announced recently that their directors would be meeting next week to consider the audited report and accounts for the year ended December 31, 2016, including possible dividend payment.

Other sectoral indices showed the cautious nature of the market as the margin between advancers and decliners remained narrow. There were 17 advancers against 15 decliners on Monday. The losses by many large-cap stocks weighed down other sectoral indices. The NSE Insurance Index and NSE Oil & Gas Index declined by 0.6 per cent each. The NSE Consumer Goods Index slipped by 0.4 per cent while the NSE Industrial Goods Index closed flat.

Mobil Oil Nigeria led the gainers with a gain of N5.23 to close at N255.09. Ecobank Transnational Incorporated followed with a gain of 42 kobo to close at N10.14. Zenith Bank added 33 kobo to close at N15.90. Stanbic IBTC Holdings rose by 30 kobo to close at N15.82 while Access Bank gathered 20 kobo to close at N6.89 per share.

Total turnover stood at 174 million shares valued at N1.2 billion with banking stocks occupying the first six positions on the activities’ chart. Diamond Bank was the most active stock with 38.69 million shares worth N44.89 million. Fidelity Bank placed second with 29.58 million shares worth N26.6 million while Stanbic IBTC Holdings ranked third with 11.97 million shares valued at N185.62 million.

Read also: NSE RoundUp! Nigerian equities in modest recovery as emerging stocks rally

On the negative side, Total Nigeria led the losers with a loss of N14.60 to close at N285.40. Seven-Up Bottling Company dropped by N4.40 to close at N107. Guinness Nigeria declined by N3.03 to close at N69.99. Forte Oil and NCR Nigeria lost 42 kobo each to close at N73.58 and N8.11 while Nigerian Breweries declined by 18 kobo to close at N142.

“We expect sentiment to remain slightly bullish at tomorrow (Tuesday)’s trading, though the pace of rally is likely to slow down. Current valuations however presents an attractive entry points for risk tolerant investors,” SCM Capital, a dealer at the Exchange, stated.

Investor sentiment improved as market breadth strengthened to 1.1x (17 advancing stocks against 15 decliners) relative to 0.8x in the previous session. The best performing stocks were DIAMOND (+7.2%), NAHCO (+4.5%) and ETI (+4.3%) while NCR (-4.9%), TOTAL (-4.9%) and CUTIX (-4.5%) were the worst performers.

Monday’s positive performance is attributable to further interest in banking stocks which has sustained uptrend for 4 consecutive session due to bargain hunting. We do not expect the positive sentiment on banking stocks to be sustained for long as pressures in the macro-economic space remain unaddressed.

 

 

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