Equities Market Declines Further By 0.32%.

By: Salamatu Ejembi, Lagos

The equities market on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange Limited, NGX further depreciated on Wednesday with the benchmark index decreasing by 0.32%.

The All-share index dropped 336.82 basis points or 0.32% from 104,518.14 basis points to settle at 104,181.32 points while the market capitalization fell from ₦59,096 trillion to close at ₦58,905 trillion, shedding off ₦191 billion.

Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns printed -0.4% and +39.3%, respectively.

Selloffs of GUARANTY TRUST HOLDING COMPANY PLC (-1.23%), ZENITH BANK PLC (-1.23%) and FBN HOLDINGS PLC (-5.02%) outweighed gains DANGOTE SUGAR REFINERY PLC (+1.35%), FLOUR MILLS NIG PLC (+0.64%) and JULIUS BERGER NIG PLC (+0.08%).

Analysis of today’s market activities showed that the total volume of trades decreased by 25.8% while the value of transactions dropped by 39.04% as a total of 405.03m shares valued at ₦8.91bn were exchanged in 10,364 deals.

ACCESS HOLDINGS PLC (-4.20%) led the volume chart with 50.00m units traded while ZENITH BANK PLC (-1.23%) led the value chart in deals worth ₦1.86bn.

Market breadth closed negative with 21 declining issues outnumbering the 32 advancing ones.

Top on the advancers’ chart is UNIVERSITY PRESS PLC with an increase of 0.24k or 9.84% in share price from ₦2.44k per share to ₦2.68k per share.

Next is S C O A NIG. PLC increasing from ₦1.96k per share to settle at ₦2.15k per share, by 0.19k or 9.69%.

MORISON INDUSTRIES PLC. followed with a rise from ₦1.76k per share to ₦1.93k per share, gaining 0.17k or 9.66%.

Conversely, INTERNATIONAL ENERGY INSURANCE PLC led the laggards’ table with a fall from ₦1.60k per share to close today at ₦1.44k per share, losing -0.16k or -10.00%.

Followed right after by CAVERTON OFFSHORE SUPPORT GRP PLC with a fall from ₦1.80k per share to ₦1.62k per share by -0.18k or -10.00%.

And THOMAS WYATT NIG. PLC fell from ₦2.18k per share to settle at ₦1.97k per share thus declining by -0.21k or -9.63%.

On sectors, the Banking (-2.4%) and Insurance (-2.1%) indices posted losses while the Consumer Goods (+0.2%) index gained. The Industrial Goods and Oil & Gas indices closed flat.

Olusola Akintonde