Nigerian Stock Exchange Value Drops 0.16% Thursday

By Dipo Olowookere

Transactions at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) were bearish on Thursday, with profit taking reducing the market value by 0.16 percent.

During the session, the All-Share Index (ASI) reduced by 39.53 points to 24,933.41 points from 24,972.94 points, while the market capitalisation decreased by N20 billion to N13.007 trillion from N13.027 trillion.

A look at the sectoral performance showed that the industrial goods index closed flat, while the insurance space grew by 1.21 percent, with the energy counter growing by 0.43 percent.

However, the consumer goods index depreciated yesterday by 1.83 percent, while the banking counter went down marginally by 0.05 percent.

Business Post reports that the market breadth ended on a negative note on Thursday with 10 price losers as against the nine price gainers of the day.

Nigerian Breweries topped the losers’ log after shedding N4 to settle at N38 per unit and was followed by Fidson, which depreciated by 33 kobo to sell at N3.07 per unit.

Neimeth continued its slide at the market, losing 18 kobo at the session to quote at N1.71 per share, NPF Microfinance Bank lost 11 kobo to finish at N1.40 per unit, while Jaiz Bank dropped 6 kobo to end at 61 kobo per share.

Conversely, MTN Nigeria was the market’s highest gainer on Thursday, appreciating by 50 kobo to trade at N115.50 per share.

C&I Leasing gained 40 kobo to finish at N4.60 per unit, Oando grew by 10 kobo to sell at N2.55 per share, GTBank also grew by 10 kobo finish at N23.10 per unit, while AIICO Insurance gained 8 kobo to trade at 97 kobo per share.

At the market yesterday, the volume of shares traded by investors went down by 35.63 percent to 171.2 million from 266.0 million of the previous day, while the value of the trades shed 18.39 percent to N2.2 billion from N2.7 billion, with the number of deals crashing by 6.99 percent to 3,315 deals from 3,564 deals.

FCMB was the most active stock of the session, transacting 32.4 million shares worth N55.7 million, while GTBank traded 29.4 million equities valued at N707.9 million.

FBN Holdings exchanged 10.7 million stocks for N54.4 million, UBA sold 9.9 million shares worth N63.0 million, while Access Bank traded 9.2 million equities valued at N62.4 million.