Nigerian Equities Extend Losses Despite New Listing …NSE ASI down 51bps

LAGOA (Capital Markets in Africa) – The Nigerian bourse closed in the red for the third consecutive trading session as persistent sell-offs in market bellwethers dragged the benchmark index 0.5% southwards to 25,903.55pts, worsening YTD loss to –3.6%. Price depreciation in NESTLE (-3.7%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-3.5%) and ZENITH (-2.0%) were the major drag to performance. Accordingly, market capitalisation reduced by N45.7bn to N8.9tn despite the new listing of Med-View Airline Plc (MEDVIEW) which added N14.6bn to market capitalization. A total of 9.8bn ordinary shares of MEDVIEW were listed by the introduction at N1.50/share. The Airline conveys an estimated 3m passengers and 46m tons of cargo to 14 domestic and international destinations (including London-UK, Jeddah-Saudi Arabia, and Accra- Ghana) annually. Activity level was mixed as volume traded grew 48.2% to 305.0m units while value traded declined 43.1% to N1.6bn respectively.

Industrial Goods Index emerges Lone Gainer
For the Second consecutive trading session, the Industrial Goods index was the lone gainer, up 4.1% on account of price appreciation in WAPCO (+8.3%). On the other hand, the Consumer Goods index declined the most for the second trading session, losing 3.2% as investors sold off on NESTLE (-3.7%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-3.5%) while the Oil & Gas index slid 2.3%. The Banking and Insurance indices depreciated 0.5% apiece on the back of losses in ZENITH (-2.0%) and CONTINSURE (-4.5%).

Frail sentiment Persists
Investor sentiment was soft as market breadth eased to 0.3x (from 0.7x yesterday) on account of 9 advancing stocks relative to 27 decliners. The best performing stocks were WAPCO (+8.3%), CAVERTON (+4.0%) and ACCESS (+3.0%) while FORTE (-5.0%), GUINNESS (-5.0%) and UNILEVER (-5.0%) were the worst performing stocks. Market performance remained tepid despite M EDVIEW’s listing today due to a lacklustre expectation about corporate scorecards which is anchored on current macroeconomic realities.

Source: Afrinvestor Research Nigeria