By Dipo Olowookere
There were 27 price gainers and nine price losers at the local equity market on Tuesday as bargain hunters intensified their activities, cherry-picking strong stocks trading at low value.
At the end of the day, they boosted the All-Share Index (ASI) by 86.63 points to 25,413.76 points from 25,327.13 points and grew the market capitalisation by N45 billion to N13.258 trillion from N13.213 trillion.
During the session, a total of 1.1 billion equities worth N2.1 billion were traded on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in 3,221 deals as against the 302.0 million shares worth N2.7 billion transacted in 3,854 deals the previous day.
This indicated a rise in the trading volume by 255.6 per cent as a result of the off-market deal between UAC Nigeria and Custodian Investment for the transfer of over 900 million shares of UPDC. However, the trading value reduced by 19.91 per cent, while the number of deals decreased by 16.42 per cent.
UAC Property, also known as UPDC, was the most active stock at the market on Tuesday, trading 947.7 million units valued at N663.7 million, while Access Bank, which followed, traded 22.7 million stocks for N145.0 million.
GTBank exchanged 10.9 million equities worth N279.4 million, Fidelity Bank transacted 8.5 million stocks valued at N14.8 million, while LASACO Assurance sold 8.1 million shares for N2.1 million.
Nigerian Breweries was the highest price gainer of the day, adding N2 to its share price to sell for N39 per share, while Stanbic IBTC trailed with a price appreciation of 45 kobo to trade at N36.50 per share.
UBA gained 30 kobo to close at N6.55 per share, UAC Nigeria appreciated by 25 kobo to finish at N5.95 per unit, while Ecobank gained 25 kobo to settle at N4.15 per unit.
At the other side, it was a bad day for Dangote Cement as its share price depreciated by 90 kobo to close at N134 per unit, while Union Bank fell by 30 kobo to settle at N5 per unit.
PZ Cussons went down by 10 kobo to sell for N4.10 per share, May & Baker declined by 7 kobo to trade at N2.93 per unit, while FCMB dropped 5 kobo to close at N2.15 per share.
For the performance of the sub-sectors of the market, the banking index was the best performer, rising by 1.07 per cent, while the consumer goods sector gained 0.88 per cent, with the insurance index appreciating by 0.80 per cent.
Only the industrial goods counter closed in red yesterday, going down by 0.12 per cent, while the oil/gas space closed flat.
