Equities Market Closes First Trading In Red, Sheds N77.92bn

The equities market of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) on the first trading day of the week, ended the session on a negative note, as the market capitalization shed N77.92billion to close at N26.37trillion.

Also, the NGX benchmark index declined by 0.3 per cent to close at 48,879.7 points, consequently, the Year-to-date (YTD) return of the market weakened to 14.4 per cent from 14.7 per cent the previous trading day.

Analysis of yesterday’s market activities showed trade turnover settled lower relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions declining by 36.09 per cent.

A total of 173.46million units of shares valued at N2.39billion were exchanged in 4,926 deals. GTCO (-0.85%) led the volume and value charts with 71.19m units traded in deals worth N1.26billion.

Top gainers in yesterday’s trading session were led by MULTIVERSE (+9.8%), RTBRISCOE (+8.8%) and NGXGROUP (+7.5%). However, INTBREW (-9.1%), REDSTAREX (-7.8%) and SOVRENINS (-7.4%) posted as today’s biggest losers. The total volume and value traded declined by 51.4 per cent and 36.1 per cent respectively to 173.4million units and N2.4billion.

On the sectoral breakdown, performance was majorly bearish in three indices with the exception of the marginal growth rate in the Industrial Goods index and a 0.4 per cent increase in the Consumer Goods index. This is accredited to gains in AIICO (+5.8%) and WAPIC (+2.9%).

Meanwhile, the Banking, Consumer Goods and Oil and Gas indices possessed a bearish performance, down 2.6 per cent, 0.4 per cent and 0.3 per cent respectively. We attribute their losses to investors’ selloffs in FIDELITYBK (-4.9%), INTBREW (-9.1%), and OANDO (-2.1%) respectively.

The Nigerian Exchange Group (NGXGROUP), one of the top gainers in today’s trading session, finished its fiscal year 2020 with a 23.9 per cent decrease in revenue year-on-year, with N3.7billion, as opposed to the N5.0billion recorded in the previous year.

BRIU analysts also observed a percentage decrease in other years as well (2016-2020), with the exception of 2017 and 2019, when their revenue increased by 129.8 per cent and 2.7 per cent, respectively, from N2.6billion in 2016 to N5.9billion in 2017 and N4.8billion in 2018 to N5.0billionn in 2019.