Nestle Halts Nigerian Equity Market’s 3-Day Losing Streak

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

Trading on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) closed for the week on Friday on a positive note, reversing the three consecutive bad sessions since Tuesday, Business Post reports.

The stock market heaved a sigh of relief a day after Nestle posted a revenue growth of 20 percent in 2016, according to its 2016 full year financial report released to the NSE.

The rush for its shares and its performance today gave the stock market a lift, swinging northward by 0.73 percent compared with the 1.40 percent fall it posted on Thursday.

Our correspondent reports that Nestle recorded a gain of N58.42k to lead the 16 advancing stocks on the NSE on Friday, closing at N628.42k per share.

Mobil came second with a rise of N5 to end the day at N285 per share, while Forte Oil progressed by N2.51k to finish at N51.87k per share.

Beta Glass also increased by N1.91k to end at N40.18k per share and Okomu Oil gained 70k to close at N48.70k per share.

At the market today, the volume and value of shares transacted went up by 88.2 million and N1.7 billion respectively.

Business Post correspondent reports that investors traded a total of 274.2 million shares on Friday at N3.4 billion in 2,856 deals in contrast to 186 million units exchanged on Thursday in 2,899 deals valued at N1.8 billion.

Also today, a total of 13 stocks depreciated in price and were led by 7up, which declined by N5 to close at N95 per share.

Custodian and Allied Plc lost 16k to finish at N3.25k per share, while GTBank depreciated by 10k to end at N24.80k per share.

Nigerian Breweries also suffered a loss of 10k to close at N128.90k per share and UCAP went down by 5k to finish at N2.85k per share.

The All-Share Index today improved by 182.49 points to close at 25,012.08 points, while the market capitalisation rose by N63,2 billion to finish at N8.66 trillion.

Zenith Bank and Sterling Bank led the activity chart on Friday with the former accounting for 132.6 million shares traded at N1.9 billion, while the latter exchanged 25.4 million shares valued at N18.6 million.