NSE LIVE! Equities record marginal decline in resilient trading

Nigerian equities pulled back from the steep decline that greeted Tuesday’s JP Morgan announcement of removal of Nigerian bonds from its government index. Against the background of a whooping loss of N312 billion on Wednesday in the first trading session after the JP Morgan announcement, quoted equities showed resilience yesterday at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to close with marginal loss of N18 billion.
While there were 25 losers to 23 gainers, the gap between decliners and advancers narrowed considerably compared with 46 decliners against nine advancers recorded on Wednesday. Several highly capitalised stocks rallied against the downtrend as investors sustained bargain-hunting for undervalued stocks.
Aggregate market value of all quoted equities on the NSE dropped marginally from N10.129 trillion to N10.111 trillion, representing a loss of N18 billion. The All Share Index (ASI), the value-based benchmark index that tracks prices of all quoted equities, slipped from 29,454.09 points to close at 29,403.12 points, indicating a day-on-day decline of 0.17 per cent. This however nudged the overall year-to-date return to -15.16 per cent.
Analysts at Cowry Assets Management Limited, a Lagos-based investment firm that trades on the NSE, said the marginal decline was due to leftover of the initial reactions to the JP Morgan’s exclusion of Nigerian sovereign bonds from JP Morgan’s Government Bond Index for Emerging Markets (GBI-EM).
Cadbury Nigeria led the losers with a loss of N1.45 to close at N23.06. Stanbic IBTC Holdings dropped by N1.24 to close at N23.66. UAC of Nigeria declined by 62 kobo to close at N31.68. Ecobank Transnational Incorporated slipped by 59 kobo to N18.16 while United Bank for Africa dropped by 54 kobo to close at N3.55 per share.
Total turnover yesterday stood at 306.1 million shares worth N3.09 billion in 4,653 deals. United Bank for Africa was the most active stock with a turnover of 55.33 million shares valued at N198.29 million.
Analysts at Afrinvest Securities said while the negative impact of the JP Morgan’s exclusion remained, the fundamentals of quoted companies remained attractive.

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“The market seemed to have bucked the strong rally seen from last week up until Tuesday. This remained linked to the announcement of the gradual phase-off of Nigeria from the JP Morgan Emerging Market Bond Index….We believe that the broad fundamentals of the companies in the bourse remain relatively insulated from the contagion effect of the bonds rout,” Afrinvest Securities stated.
On the other hand, Nestle Nigeria led the contrarian stocks with a gain of N18 to close at N820. Guinness Nigeria followed with a gain of N6.57 to close at N138.05. Dangote Cement added N1.94 to close at N165. PZ Cussons rose by N1 to close at N26. Lafarge Africa gained 96 kobo to close at N97 while Nigerian Breweries chalked up 82 kobo to close at N124 per share.

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