Nigerian Equity Markets | 16 Oct 2015: Nigerian All Share index 0.5% higher amid strong Q3 results ….

Lagos, Nigeria, Capital Markets in Africa — Following the trickling in of some Q3:2015 results that began yesterday, the market ended the week stronger than it opened, closing 0.5% higher to 29,834.21 points. Market capitalization equally improved N46.1bn to settle at N10.3tn. Today’s sustained positive performance was against renewed buying interest in ZENITH (+3.9%), GUARANTY (+2.0%) and FORTE OIL (+3.7%). Market activities measured by volume and value however declined 9.0% and 35.3% to 157.3m units and N2.2bn respectively.   

Sector indices were broadly positive today. The Banking index performed the best, closing 1.5% higher on appreciations in ZENITH (+3.9%) and GUARANTY (+2.0%). FORTE OIL (+3.7%) equally pushed the Oil & Gas basket higher by 1.1%. The Insurance and Consumer Goods sectors also closed northwards with 0.4% and 0.1% – AIICO (+4.7%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+0.2%) respectively. On the other hand, consequent on the 2.9% sell-off in CCNN the Industrial index fell 3bps.

After staying negative in the last 4 days, market breadth turned positive at 1.0x today (19 advancers vs. 20 decliners). The gainers’ chart was topped by SKYE BANK (+9.7%), LEARN AFRICA (+5.0%) and AIICO (+4.7%) while TRANSCORP (-9.6%), E-TRANZACT (-5.0%) and CAVERTON (-5.0%) led the losers. We believe the recent performance on the bourse is closely linked to the release of Q3:2015 results, hence, we expect market to remain marginally positive in subsequent sessions.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team