By Modupe Gbadeyanka
In the past few days, there have been huge activities around the shares of embattled Oando Plc at the Nigerian stock market.
The firm was placed on a technical suspension by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in October 2017, making it impossible for the shares of the energy firm to partake in full market activities on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
But since the beginning of this year, there has been huge sales volume in the shares of Oando.
According to analysts at Proshare Research, the huge volumes recorded on the stock came as a result of speculative trading largely from retail investors.
Analysis showed that the average volume of Oando stocks traded by investors in the last one month was 2.98 million, a comparison of this with the last traded volume reflected 945.87 percent growth.
But at the close of trading on January 4, 2018, about 31.17 million shares of Oando Plc worth N186.71 million were exchanged by investors at N5.99k per share in contrast to 12.52 million units traded for N75.01 million the previous day, representing 148.90 percent growth in comparison to the previous day.
Furthermore, it also represents 3.78 percent of the total market volumes of 825.13 million as against 2.12 percent of the total market volumes of 589.58 million traded the previous day.
Also, a look at the volume traded in the last one month reflected that the 31.17 million shares traded on Thursday was the highest ever traded within the period under review.
The total volume traded represents 0.25 percent of Oando’s total shares outstanding put at N12.43 billion shares.
Investors and observers are still waiting for the forensic audit to be carried on Oando Plc, but SEC has maintained that the exercise will still go on this month.
Oando was accused of deceiving the investing public when it allegedly tampered with its financial statements few years ago.
Additional information from Proshare
