Nigeria Market Watch | June 22nd 2015: Bellwethers Raise Benchmark Index…NSE ASI up 38bps

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) —The Nigerian All Share Index inched up 0.4% to 33,384.59 points. Market capitalization also rose N43.2bn to berth at N11.4tr at the close of market. Today’s performance was majorly driven by price appreciation in key counters such as NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+1.7%), DANGOTE CEMENT (+0.3%) and UBN (+2.7%). However, market activity softened as volume and value eased 28.8% and 21.0% to close at 278.1m units and N3.8bn respectively.

Sell offs in stocks such as MOBIL (-2.0%) and FORTE OIL (-0.1%) dragged the Oil & Gas index southwards (-0.2%). On the contrary, the Consumer Goods index trended upbeat with an increase of 0.7% as NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+1.7%), INTBREW (+5.0%) and UNILEVER (+1.1%) advanced. The Industrial Goods index also improved 0.7% as buying appetite for sector giant- DANGOTE CEMENT (+0.3%) strengthened. Likewise, the Banking and Insurance indices both rebounded 0.6% and 0.3% respectively compared to their performance in the previous session.

Market breadth closed positive (1.3x) as 27 stocks advanced while 21 stocks declined. The top gainers were DIAMONDBNK (+5.5%), PRESCO (+5.0%) and INTBREW (+5.0%) while the top losers were REDSTAREX (-5.0%), OKOMUOIL (-5.0%) and VONO (-4.8%). We believe today’s performance was broadly driven by bargain hunters given extended days of losses in the market. We also think key policy signal may filter into the market soon given recent news flows in the media. In the interim however, we advise investors to take position in fundamentally sound counters with attractive prices.
Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team