Trading activities in the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) stock market yesterday kicked off the week with negative sentiments as investors’ profit taking in Airtel Africa Plc, BUA Foods, Guaranty Trust Holdings Plc (GTCO) and 20 others down market capitalization by N75 billion.
The overall market capitalisation value lost N75 billion to close at N25.361 trillion from N25.436 trillion it opened for trading, while the NGX All-Share Index declined by 139.02 basis points or 0.30 per cent to close at 47,063.28 basis points from 47,202.30 basis points it opened for trading.
Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns moderated to +1.0 per cent and +10.2per cent, respectively.
The highly capitalised stocks that depreciated the market were Airtel Africa that dropped by 1.7 per cent to close at N1,250.00 and BUA Foods depreciated by 1.46 per cent to close at N60.90.
GTCO also dropped by 0.75 per cent to close at N26.40, while Nigerian Breweries tumbled by 0.31 per cent to close at n47.80 per share yesterday.
Analysing by sectors, the NGX Oil & Gas index depreciated by 0.2 per cent, NGX Insurance also dropped by 0.2per cent, as NGX Industrial Goods down by 0.1per cent while the Consumer Goods rose by 1.1 per cent as the NGX Banking index closed flat.
Meanwhile, market breadth closed at par, as 23 stocks both advanced and declined. Guinness Nigeria, Learn Africa and NCR Nigeria recorded the highest price gain of 10 per cent each to close at N66.55, N1.65 and N3.63, per share. University Press followed with a gain of 9.81 per cent to close at N2.91, while Academy Press up by 9.56 per cent to close at N1.49, per share.
Pharma-Deko rose by 9.09 per cent to close at N1.80, while NEM Insurance gained 8.13 per cent to close at N3.59, per share.
On the other hand, Japaul Gold and Ventures led the losers’ chart by 7.69 per cent to close at 36 kobo, per share. Courteville Business Solutions followed with a decline of 7.27 per cent to close at 51 kobo, while Custodian Investment lost 5.70 per cent to close at N7.45, per share.
NGX Group declined 5.66 per cent to close at N25.00, while NPF Microfinance Bank shed 5.45 per cent to close at N2.08, per share.
The total volume traded increased by 8.51 per cent to 338.025 million units, valued at N5.675 billion, and exchanged in 5,619 deals. Transactions in the shares of Fidelity Bank topped the activity chart with 35.821 million shares valued at N104.933 million. Access Bank followed with 33.854 million shares worth N353.717 million, while Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (Transcorp) traded 32.877 million shares valued at N38.505 million.
Sterling Bank traded 24.507 million shares valued at N41.909 million, while GTCO transacted 23.180 million shares worth N613.440 million.
This week, analysts at United Capital Plc expected to see investors continue to book profits on positions that have appreciated significantly in the past weeks.
“From the large cap stocks, we expecting the profit-taking to extend to their mid-cap and small-cap out-performers. That said, with the big banks likely to release their full year, 2021 numbers within the next two weeks, we expect investors to begin to take positions in names expected to deliver outperforming numbers while declaring strong dividend payments,” it stated.
