NSE ROUND-UP: Profit-taking and unimpressive company financials erode stocks by N471bn

Huge sell-offs of stocks that had accumulated gains over recent weeks of largely bullish trade disrupted that positive momentum this week as the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) heaped up losses all through save for Wednesday.

Speculators, waiting to cash in on capital appreciation especially from the over N2 trillion gain posted the week before, issued orders to sell shares in their numbers that outweighed weaker demand for equities, laying the track for a loss in the neighbourhood of N471 billion.

A number of company results that trickled in did not help sentiment, with big banks like Guarantee Trust Bank (GTB) and United Bank for Africa (UBA) reporting profit drop in their nine-month to September financials, while similarly less-than-impressive performance from Sterling and Union banks made investors worry.

Ekocorp, ETransact, Tantalisers and Notore Chemical all posted losses.

Read also: NSE ROUND-UP: Investors rack up N350bn in gains as market sentiment heals further

All the key market performance indicators declined. A negative market breadth was recorded, with 55 losers emerging against 21 gainers. The All Share Index (ASI) and market capitalisation simultaneously weakened by 2.57%. While the former closed at 34,136.82 basis points, the latter closed at N17.838 trillion.

Trade volume of 11.400 billion shares worth N35.892 billion was recorded in 39,265 deals relative to the 4.509 billion shares valued at N58.733 billion posted in 47,140 deals last week.

On the activity chart, the Construction/Real Estate sector dominated trade with 8.529 billion shares estimated at N6.055 billion traded in 438 deals. Specifically, it added 74.82 percent and 16.87 percent to the total equity volume and value respectively. The Financial Services Industry came next, trading 1.991 billion shares worth N19.933 billion in 21,725 deals. The Conglomerates Industry was third, trading 423.702 million shares priced at N526.698 million in 1,962 deals.

As regards index movement, all indices fell save for the NSE Insurance Index, which climbed by 0.51 percent. The NSE AseM Index did not budge.

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