Nigeria Equity Watch | 11 Aug 2015: Stock Market Bears Resurface …NSE ASI down 56bps.

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — Following a marginal gain recorded yesterday, Nigerian equities market benchmark index yielded to sell pressure today, as the All Share Index (ASI) dipped 0.6% to berth 31,269.71pts. Today’s bearish outcome was on account of price depreciation in DANGCEM (-0.5%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-4.2%) and CONOIL (-9.7%). Market capitalization contracted N60.6bn to settle at N10.7tn. Market activity however improved as volume rose 91.5% to 281.0m units while value surged 102.7% to N2.9bn.

Sector performance was broadly bearish, mirroring the performance of the overall index. Losses encountered in DANGCEM (-0.5%) brought the Industrial Index to a negative close (-0.5%). The Consumer Goods index waned 1.1% on account of NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-4.2%) and NASCON (-4.7%). The Insurance index fell 0.4% as a result of price depreciation in CONTINSURE (-4.2%) and CUSTODYINS (-1.2%) while Oil & Gas sector declined 0.3% as investors sold down on CONOIL (-9.7%) and OANDO (-0.8%). Nevertheless, the banking index emerged sole gainer, up 0.5% on the back of gains in ZENITH (+2.1%) and GUARANTY (+1.0%).

Market breadth (advancers/decliners ratio) was negative at 0.6x as 15 stocks advanced while 27 stocks declined, reflecting investors weakened sentiment. Top gainers were EVANSMED (+9.9%), FLOURMILL (+9.7%) and BERGER (+4.8%) while top losers were CONOIL (-9.7%), NIG-GERMAN (-9.7%) and ETERNA (-9.4%). We believe today’s performance remained primarily driven by speculations on key counters in the market. Hence, we advise investors to maintain a medium to long term investment horizon.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team