Nigeria Market Watch | June 23rd 2015: Activity Level Softens on Nigerian bourse… NSE ASI closes flat

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — Nigerian Equities Market closed flat today as the benchmark index -All Share Index (ASI) held steady at 33,381.45 pts after easing 1bps. Similarly, market capitalization shed N1.1bn firming at N11.4tn. Price appreciation in Banking and Oil and Gas heavy weights such as ZENITH (+2.1%) ETI (+2.0%), FORTE OIL (+5.0%) and SEPLAT (+5.0%) were countered by losses in Industrial and Consumer Goods majors such as DANGOTE CEMENT (-0.8%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.4%), hence the marginal decline observed today. In like manner, market activity declined as volume and value rose 25.2% and 41.6% to 208.1m units and N2.2bn respectively.

After 5 days of bearish performance, the Oil & Gas index rose significantly by 2.9% majorly on account of rally in SEPLAT (+5.0%) and FORTE OIL (+5.0%). Following in the gaining course was the Banking index (+0.4%) on price appreciation in ZENITH (+2.1%) and ETI (+2.0%).  On the flip side, the decline in MANSARD (-1.7%) and NEM (-4.1%) pushed the Insurance index down 0.5%. Another significant loss was the Industrial index as it shed 0.4% against the back drop of price depreciation in DANGOTE CEMENT (-0.8%). The Consumer Goods Index also dipped 0.3%.

Market sentiment (ratio of advancers/losers) swung to 0.7x as UPL (+7.4%), SEPLAT (+5.0%) and MOBIL (+5.0%) led the 17 top advancers while VONO (-8.7%), NPFMCRFBK (-6.1%) and HONYFLOUR (-5.0%) led the 26 market laggards. The “wait and see” strategy on fiscal policy may be ebbing as investors now anticipate half year earnings highlights of listed stocks. We anticipate more buying activity in the equities market in the short term as marginal swings continue.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team