By Dipo Olowookere
In the outgone year 2017, the best performing stock on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) was Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, appreciating year-on-year by 227.33 percent, to close at N20, Punch is reporting.
Last year was a very good one for the local bourse and a number of equities performed relatively well at the market.
For the first time in three years, the Nigerian market closed the year in the positive territory, as the NSE All-Share Index (ASI) returned 42.30 percent year-on-year. Consequently, market capitalisation advanced significantly to close at N13.61 trillion in contrast to N9.25 trillion as at the end of 2016.
A report by CNN, a global news platform, revealed that the Nigerian stock market was the third best performing market in the world in 2017, doing better than the United States market.
Apart from Dangote Sugar, which topped the best performing stock in Nigeria last year, another stock that did well was International Breweries Plc, which recorded a 194.59 percent growth.
Also, Fidelity Bank Plc increased by 192.86 percent in 2017, Fidson Healthcare Plc went up by 189.06 percent, while Dangote Flour Plc advanced by 185.88 percent last year.
On the flip side, Morison Industries Plc was the worst performing stock in the year, going down by 67.88 percent year-on-year, with a closing price of N0.53.
This was followed by Forte Oil Plc, University Press Plc, MRS Oil Plc and Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc, which featured among the top underperformers in the year with respective returns of -48.50 percent, -46.23 percent, -36.49 percent and -30.25 percent.
For the sector performance as measured by the NSE sector indices, all sectors closed the year in the positive territory.
The banking sector was the top performing sector, with a return of 73.32 percent while the oil/gas sector was the top laggard, with a return of 5.76 percent.
NSE food/beverage, NSE industrial goods and NSE insurance indices recorded advancements of 36.97 percent, 23.84 percent and 10.36 percent accordingly.
It was observed that the volume of transactions and market value advanced by 6.94 percent and 108.50 percent, respectively. The market closed in favour of the bulls as 67 advancers emerged while 38 declined.
