Nigeria Market Watch | June 16th 2015: Bears Return to the Market… NSE ASI down 35bps

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — The Nigerian Bourse halted three days uptrend, easing 0.4%to close the day at 33,602. 67 points. Losses recorded in UNION BANK (-4.8%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-1.3%) and DANGOTE CEMENT (-0.6%) were largely responsible for today’s decline. Also, market capitalization moderated by N40.3bn to berth at N11.5tn. Market activity weakened on 2.8% and 25.1% depreciation in volume and value traded after a total of 222.9m units of shares worth N3.6bn exchanged hands.

Performance across the various sector was mixed. Contrary to previous session, the Consumer Goods index depreciated 0.6% consequent on losses in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-1.3%) and GUINNESS (-0.2%). Similarly, the Oil & Gas index and the Industrial Goods index fell 0.3% and 0.2% respectively. On the other hand, Insurance sector index added 1.3% due to gains in MANSARD (+5.0%) while the Banking index rose marginally, up 0.1% on gains in GUARANTY (+0.8%) and ZENITH (+0.5%).

Market sentiment remained weak with 19 stocks advancing against 25 declining stocks. Hence, market breadth (advancers/ decliners ratio) docked at 0.8x. The top gainer’ for the day were IKEJA HOTEL (+6.7%), MANSARD (+4.9%) and FIDSON (+4.9%) while UNION HOMES (-9.7%), OKOMU OIL (-4.9%) and WEMA BANK (-4.8%) were the biggest losers. We expect the market to continue to trade sideways, even as some ‘early bird positioning’ is expected to set in.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team