Nigeria Market Watch | June 2nd 2015: Nigerian Equities Market Defies Presidential Silence…NSE ASI up 5bps

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa):- Despite a presidential silence on key policy direction and appointment of key cabinet members, the Nigerian All Share index (ASI) added 5bps today as against previous session to close at 34,061.89 points. Today’s gain was broadly driven by price appreciation in Consumer Goods tickers such as NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+2.0%) and UNILEVER (+0.9%). Market capitalization advanced N5.9bn to close N11.6tn while activity level measured by volume and value decreased 34.2% and 36.8% to close 224.1m units and N3.5bn respectively.

After 9 Straight trading days of decline, the Consumer Goods index was up 1.0% today as NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+2.0%) and UNILEVER (+0.9%) rally. The Insurance sector index followed with 0.3% gain due to appreciation in CONTINSURE (+1.0%). The Industrial index also added 1bps for the second consecutive trading day. On the other hand, the Oil & Gas and Banking sector indices declined 1.6% and 0.3% respectively.

At the close of market, 26 stocks advanced while 19 stocks declined. This brought market breadth to 1.4x as buy sentiment subdued sell sentiment. VONO (+9.6%), COSTAIN (+9.2%) and DANGOTE FLOUR (+5.0%) topped the advancers’ table while INTENEGINS (-5.7%), ACADEMY (-5.0%) and NPFMCRFBK (-5.0%) topped the losers table. We believe today’s marginal gain was mainly driven by investors hunt for bargain in Consumer Goods counters which have been down for 9 consecutive days. Nevertheless, we expect the perceived silence of the new President on policy direction to keep market activity soft in the near term. Hence, we advise investors to maintain a medium to long term position in equities.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team