Bank Share Transactions Record N91.3 Billion Turnover

The volume of shares traded increased last week due to heavy bank share transactions; 51,406 deals on the Exchange floor resulted in a turnover of 2.5 billion shares valued at N91.3 billion.

Nonetheless, this number of shares traded exceeded the 2.7 billion units, worth N49.8 billion, that were swapped in 43,298 transactions on December 13.

With 1.6 billion shares worth N23.4 billion moved in 22,766 transactions, the financial services sector dominated the activity chart in terms of volume.

This sector contributed 26.2% and 25.70% to the overall stock turnover.

In 2,840 transactions, the ICT sector came in second with 201.2 million units valued at N3.1 billion.

With a turnover of 182.2 million shares valued at N7.9 billion in 3,019 transactions, the services sector came in third.

In 1,544 transactions, trading in the top three stocks—Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc, Wema Bank Plc, and e-Tranzact International Plc—accounted for 623.895 million shares valued at N3.9 billion, or 24.6% of the total equity turnover.

According to the price movement chart, the Nigerian stock market ended the week higher for the third consecutive week.

This was due to bargain hunting in Aradel (+20.7%) after ministerial approval for Renaissance Africa Energy Limited to acquire Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), as well as price increases in GTCO (+7.7%) and Transcorp (+9.4%).

These factors caused the All-Share Index and market capitalization to rise by 1.8%, closing the week at 101,129.09 and N61.303 trillion, respectively.

In a similar vein, every other index ended the day higher, except the NGX ASeM index, which closed flat, and the NGX industrial goods and sovereign bond, which saw depreciations of 0.9% and 0.6%, respectively.

As a result, the year-to-date (YTD) and month-to-date (MTD) returns increased by 35.2% and 3.7%, respectively.

As investors reposition themselves ahead of full-year earnings and dividend releases by blue-chip corporations, analysts see a bullish outlook amid the holiday bargain hunt.

Manomsi Mallum/ The Guardian