Stock Watch: Top Recommendations for the Week (March 26)

By Dipo Olowookere

Last week, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) closed the week on negative note, losing 0.39 percent to further trim the YtD returns to 8.4 percent.

However, the market breadth remained positive with 33 price gainers and 24 price losers. The market sentiment remained much better than earlier sessions last week and there are strong indications that today, the huge renewed appetite for banking stocks will remain positive.

Last week, UBA released its FY’17 results with top and bottom line up 20 percent to N462 billion and 9 percent to N79 billion.

The lender proposed a final dividend of 65 kobo per share against 55 kobo paid in 2016 and the stock traded last Friday at N11.50k with 12 percent YtD returns.

As usual, analysts at Vetiva Research have revealed their top recommendations for this week, which are presented below.