Business

NSE LIVE! Equities open with modest gain

Published

9 years ago

October 13, 2015

Nigerian equities opened this week with a tight but favourable outlook as investors continued their portfolio re-balancing and alignments ahead of the expected inflow of the first batch of third quarter corporate earnings in the next few days.
With 25 gainers to 16 losers, the Nigerian stock market showed widespread but subdued bullish sentiments. Most analysts expected quoted companies to roll in their third quarter earnings in the next few days, fueling subtle bargain-hunting for stocks considered to have favourable earnings outlook and portfolio realignments across several other stocks.
Afrinvest Securities, a Lagos-based dealer on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), said the uptrend was being driven by “activities of lurking bargain hunters in the market”, referring to investors who were anticipating that earnings prospects overweigh the current prices of some stocks.
Afrinvest Securities stated that it expects third quarter earnings to be the major driver for the stock market in the mean time.
Analysts at Cowry Asset Management Limited noted that the two-day consecutive positive trading at the stock market has coincided with improvement in global oil price. Crude oil is Nigeria’s major revenue earner.
The All Share Index (ASI), the value-based common benchmark index that tracks prices of all quoted companies on the NSE, rose by 0.22 per cent, equivalent to a gain of N23 billion. The ASI inched up to 30,231.16 points from its opening index of 30,165.22 points. This moderated the negative average year-to-date return to -12.77 per cent. Aggregate market value of all quoted companies rose correspondingly from N10.367 trillion to close at N10.390 trillion.

Forte Oil topped the gainers’ list with a gain of N10.01 to close at N264.99. Mobil Oil Nigeria followed with a gain of N4.93 to close at N150. Guinness Nigeria rallied N3.59 to close at N152.50. PZ Cussons Nigeria gathered N1 to close at N26. Ashaka Cement chalked up 59 kobo to close at N23. Zenith Bank rose by 50 kobo to close at N16.80 while Guaranty Trust Bank added 33 kobo to close at N23.66 per share.
On the downside, Nigerian Breweries led the losers with a drop of N2 to close at N138. Okomu Oil Palm declined by 66 kobo to close at N28. Flour Mills of Nigeria dropped by 63 kobo to N21.37. UAC of Nigeria lost 17 kobo to close at N28.90 while Honeywell Flour Mills, Access Bank and Vitafoam Nigeria dropped by 13 kobo each to close at N2.62, N5.07 and N5.42 respectively.
Total turnover was below average with the exchange of 134.62 million shares worth N1.48 billion in 2,904 deals. The highest turnover was recorded by Access Bank, which saw a turnover of 33.8 million shares valued at N175.53 million in 95 deals. Diamond Bank placed second on the activity chart with a turnover of 13.06 million shares worth N39.14 million in 166 deals. Zenith Bank recorded a turnover of 9.93 million shares worth N166.64 million in 226 deals.

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