By Dipo Olowookere
The gains recorded by two of the brewery stocks on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday left the market closing 0.07 per cent higher.
Nigerian Breweries, which topped the price gainer during the trading session, appreciated by N1 to settle at N36 per share. It was trailed by its competitor, International Breweries, which has been on cloud nine in the past two sessions, gaining 30 kobo yesterday to finish at N3.60 per unit.
Unilever Nigeria grew at the session by 20 kobo to sell for N13.95 per share, University Press improved by 11 kobo to trade at N1.24 per share, while Oando also gained 11 kobo to close at N2.35 per share.
In all, there were 20 price gainers on Friday as against the 12 price decliners recorded in the session led by Okomu Oil, which lost N1 to finish at N79 per share.
Its rival, Presco, depreciated by 50 kobo to close at N51 per unit, UAC Nigeria depreciated by 35 kobo to sell for N5.50 per share, GTBank declined by 15 kobo to settle at N25.10 per unit, while its colleague, Zenith Bank, lost 10 kobo to quote at N16.80 per share.
An analysis of the trades yesterday showed that the volume of stocks transacted by investors went down by 11.66 per cent to 158.6 million units from 179.5 million units.
Also, the trading value declined by 30.56 per cent to N1.8 billion from N2.5 billion, while the number of deals increased by 4.55 per cent to 3,194 deals from 3,055 deals.
Leading the chart of the top five trades yesterday was Zenith Bank, transacting 19.1 million shares valued at N322.0 million, while FBN Holdings followed with 17.9 million equities exchanged for N89.5 million.
GTBank traded 16.2 million shares worth N408.8 million, Nigerian Breweries transacted 9.1 million stocks for N327.4 million, while Chams exchanged 8.7 million shares worth N1.8 million.
Business Post reports that apart from the banking sector, which lost 0.46 per cent yesterday and the industrial goods index, which closed flat, every other key sector closed positive.
The consumer goods counter appreciated by 1.06 per cent, the oil/gas space improved by 0.43 per cent, while the insurance space grew by 0.39 per cent.
Also, the All-Share Index (ASI) increased at the close of business by 17.27 points to 25,221.87 points from 25,204.60 points. The market capitalisation equally expanded by N9 billion to N13.158 trillion from N13.149 trillion.
