Nigeria Equity Watch | 21 Aug 2015 : Nigerian Equities Market gains … All Share Index improves 0.4%

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — The Nigerian Equities Market gained today as the All Share Index (ASI) improved 0.4% to close the week at 29,878.33pts. Market capitalization also appreciated N79.3bn to settle at N10.2tn. Today’s performance was primarily driven by gains in NESTLE (+9.5%), ACCESS (+9.8%) and FORTE (+4.4%). Market activity measured by total volume and value traded eased as volume traded appreciated 88.0% (345.7m units) while value traded increased 6.3% to close at N4.9bn.

Performance across sector was mixed. The Consumer goods index led the advancers, appreciating 2.1% on account of rally in NESTLE (+9.5%) and 7UP (+0.5%). Similarly, the Oil & Gas index appreciated 1.5%. On the flipside, the Banking Index declined the most (-0.4%) which was however unexpected given the impressive H1:2015 earnings numbers submitted by GUARANTY and ACCESS yesterday. In the same vein, the Industrial Goods and Insurance indices lost 0.2% apiece consequent on price depreciation in WAPCO (-0.5%) and CUSTODYI (-3.6%)

A total sum of 16 counters appreciated in prices as against 27 laggards. Consequently, market breadth (measured by the ratio of advancers to decliners) remained unchanged from the previous session, 0.6x.  Top on the price winners’ table for the day were ACCESS (+9.8%), NESTLE (+9.5%) and TRANSCORP (+7.8%) while NIG-GERMAN (-9.6%), FCMB (-5.6%) and ETRANZACT (-5.0%) led the decliners. We expect performance in the following session to remain driven by speculations.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team