Stock Investors Gain N330bn As Market Cap Hits N20trn
Investors in the Nigerian Exchange Limited saw a N329.73bn gain on Thursday as the market capitalisation of equities climbed above N20tn for the first time in seven days.
The daily stock market report showed that the NGX All-Share Index rose by 1.69 per cent from 37,952.65 basis points on Thursday to 38,585.65bps on Monday. There was no trading on Tuesday and Wednesday, which were declared as public holidays for the Eid-el-Kabir celebration.
The market capitalisation increased to N20.10tn, driven by growth in the NGX Premium Index, which rose by 3.30 per cent to 3,755.51bps.
The number of shares traded by investors fell by 56.11 per cent from 462.81 million exchanged in 3,610 deals on Monday to 203.11 million shares in 3969 deals on Thursday.
However, the value of shares traded leapt by 43.33 per cent from N1.20bn in the previous trading day to N1.72bn. There were 22 gainers at the end of trading on the floor of the NGX as against 12 losers.
Atop the gainers’ charts was Total Nigeria Plc, which saw a 10.00 per cent jump on the back of strong earnings reports earlier in the day. Its share price rose from N168.00 to N184.40.
CUTIX Plc, an industrial goods manufacturer, gained 9.77 per cent to close at N4.38 per share.
The rest of the top five gainers were Oando Plc, Dangote Cement Plc and Courtville Business Solutions, with increases of 9.73 per cent, 7.83 per cent and 4.55 per cent each respectively.
AIICO Insurance Plc recorded the biggest loss as its share price fell by 8.70 per cent to N1.05. It was followed by Sovereign Trust Insurance Plc, which dropped by 6.45 per cent to close at N0.29 per share.
Veritas Kapital Assurance Plc (-4.00 per cent), Livestock Feeds Plc (-3.55 per cent) and Ardova Plc (-3.23 per cent) were the other top losers.
There were no Exchange Traded Fund gainers just as Meristem Growth ETF lost 1.45 per cent of its value.
Analysts from Cordros Securities said, “Trading in the local bourse was negative for most of the day; however, late buying interest in DANGCEM (+7.8 per cent) following the second tranche of the company’s proposed share buyback ensured the market closed higher Sectoral performance was broadly positive.
“Sectoral performance was broadly positive with the Industrial Goods (+4.1 per cent), Oil and Gas (+3.1 per cent), Banking (+0.3 per cent), and Consumer Goods (+0.1 per cent) indices recording gains. In contrast, the Insurance (-1.9 per cent) index declined.”
