Nigeria Equity Watch | 17 Aug 2015: No Respite for Equities Market…NSE ASI dips 260bps

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — It was a sea of red in the equities market today as the bears extended their rule over the Nigerian Equities market leading the market to close in the red for the day. This was reflected in the 2.6% decline in the All Share Index which closed at 29, 909.44 points today. The market was dragged lower by selloffs in heavily weighted stocks in the index namely, DANGCEM (-5.0%), ETI (-4.9%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-3.9%). Consequently a total of N272.9bn was lost by investors as market capitalization settled at N10.3tn. However, activity level within the market strengthened as volume and value traded surged 152.0% and 51.0% to settle at 476.4m units and N3.7bn respectively.

Sector performance was broadly bearish as all sectors indices traded southwards. The Industrial goods index was the worst performing sector declining 2.7% on account of price depreciation in DANGCEM (-5.0%) followed by the Consumer goods index which lost 2.4% due to losses in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-3.9%) and NESTLE (-1.9%). In the same vein, the Banking index fell -1.3%, despite the rally that was recorded in ZENITH (+2.3%) following the impressive H1:2015 results it posted close to the end of last week. The Insurance and Oil & Gas Indices also depreciated 1.2% and 0.6% respectively.

Investor sentiments towards the Nigerian Bourse showed no signs of improvement as market breadth (advancers/ decliner ratio) berthed at 0.2x due to 7 stocks that advanced against41 declining stocks. TRANSCORP (+4.7%), NEM (+3.2%) and FORTE (+2.3%) were the best performing stocks for the day while EVANSMED (-8.7%), FCMB (-8.5%) and ACCESS (-5.7%) declined the most. Given the continuous bearish run in the market, some value stocks have depreciated to relatively low prices which continually portend an attractive upside to investors with medium to long term horizon.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team