Nigeria Equity Watch | 23 July 2015 : Nigerian equities extend Losses … market cap down N18.2 billion, NSE ASI down 16bps

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — The equities market extended yesterday’s decline, as the benchmark index (ASI) slipped 0.2% to close at 31,216.72 points. Thus, YTD return depreciated to 9.9%. Also Market capitalization waned N18.2bn to berth at N10.7tn. Market performance for the day was mainly driven by price depreciations in banking and consumer goods stocks such as ZENITH (-0.5%), STANBIC (-2.1%) and UNILEVER (-2.1%).  Market activity was however mixed as volume traded eased 36.7% while value traded strengthened 25.5% to 208.5m units and N3.3bn respectively.

Major Sectors Trend Southwards
Sector performance mirrored overall market performance as all sectors trended southwards save for the banking sector which appreciated 0.3% on gains in FBNH (+0.1%) and ETI (+1.5%). The Industrial goods sector led the decliners with 0.3% loss while the oil & gas sector followed with 0.2%. The consumer goods and insurance sector also dipped 0.2% and 0.1% accordingly.

Market Breadth Softens
Market breadth measured by advancers/decliners ratio moderated further to 0.6x as 19 stocks appreciated in prices as against 31 decliners.  BERGER (+10.2%), NEIMETH (+9.7%), CAVERTON (+4.9%) and 7UP (+4.9) traded positive while NNFM (-5.0%), IKEJAHOTEL (-5.0%), REDSTAREX (-4.9%) and JOSBREW (-4.8%) lost. We expect market performance in the succeeding sessions to retain current trend ahead of the outcome of the on-going Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team