Lafarge Lifts Stock Market by 0.25% as GTBank Trades N2.5b Shares

By Dipo Olowookere

Equities market in Nigeria closed 0.25 percent higher on Friday after going down 0.11 percent on Thursday.

This sharp rebound was influence by gains recorded by Lafarge and 18 other stocks, even though the market breadth still finished negative with 28 equities depreciating at the close of transactions for the day.

Business Post reports that it was a very busy day for GTBank at the market, emerging the most traded equity after exchanging 61.8 million shares valued at N2.5 billion.

It was followed by UBA, which sold 51 million shares worth N499 million, and Zenith Bank, which transacted 49.4 million shares at N1.2 billion.

Also, Access Bank traded 41 million shares valued at N428.7 million, while Fidelity Bank exchanged 20.4 million shares worth N28 million.

And by the time trading activities at the stock market closed for the week yesterday, a total of 353.7 million shares valued at N6.3 billion were transacted by investors in 4,079 deals.

Unlike the previous day, Friday’s top gainers chart was led by Lafarge, which appreciated by N3 to settle at N63 per share.

It was trailed by Unilever, which advanced by N2.20k to close at N45.25k per share, and Nigerian Breweries, which went up by N1 to finish at N191 per share.

Stanbic IBTC grew by N1 to end at N41 per share, while Guinness Nigeria swallowed 50k to expand to N91.50k per share.

However, Nestle threw away N8.1k to weaken to N1208 per share, closing the day’s trading as the heaviest loser at the market.

It was closely followed by Conoil, which lost N1.71k to close at N32.59k per share, and 7up, which fell by N1.4k to end at N96.96k per share.

GTBank depreciated by 46k to close at N39.60k per share, while Dangote Flour declined by 29k to finish at N6.38k per share.

At the close of trading on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday, the All-Share Index (ASI) gained 95.75 points to close at 38,198.60 points, increasing the YTD gain to 42.14 percent, while the market capitalisation chalked up N33 billion to settle at N13.2 trillion.