Equities’ prices to continue downward spiral -- analysts

THE DOWN WARD PRICE MOVEMENT witnessed in the equities market in recent sessions is expected to proceed this week on the impact of bargain hunting in fundamentally sound stocks being countered by subsequent sell-offs.

Although the negative performance has persisted for a second consecutive week, analysts say, the bearish hold on the domestic bourse is as a result of sustained sell-offs in large capitalised stocks weighing on overall performance.

A review of performance activities in the week ended 23 November showed that the NSE All-Share Index closed in the red on 3 of the 4 trading sessions falling 1.2 percent week-on-week (W-o-W) to settle at 31,678.70 points.

This propelled an expansion in the year-to-date loss to -17.2 percent while market capitalisation shed N138.6 billion last week to close at N11.6 trillion.

Volume and value traded showed activity level for the week strengthened, as average volume and value traded increased 24.8 percent and 150.7 percent to 320.5 million units and N5.8 billion respectively. Zenith Bank in a series of unusual heavy trading topped the market’s volume and value sold during the week.

648.1 million units of the shares were exchanged, making it the week’s top traded stock. Diamond Bank followed with 138.1 million units and Oando emerged the third most traded stock by volume with a sale of 95.3 million units.

Zenith again topped the stocks with the highest value sold in the course of the week with shares worth N15.6 billion thus accounting for 62.2 percent of the total value traded in the week, Guaranty Trust Bank came second in topmost traded stocks by value with the sale of N1.6 billion worth of shares while Nigerian Breweries also sold N1.6 billion worth of shares.

The week started on a positive note as buy interest in the second and fourth biggest companies on the NSE, namely Nestle and Nigerian Breweries lifted the benchmark by 51 basis points on Monday.

However, sell pressures in the NSE’s largest, third largest and ninth largest company, namely Dangote Cement, GTB and ETI reversed previous gains as the All Share Index (ASI) shed 78 basis points on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the ASI marginally gained 5 basis points, following price appreciations in Flourmill, Zenith Bank and GTB.

On Thursday, a major spike in volume traded on Thursday was observed as a cross deal in Zenith (600m units at N24.00) was recorded. On Friday, the market closed in the red, as sell-offs in Dangote Cement, Nigerian Breweries and Wapco WAPCO dragged the index 96 basis points southwards. As a result, the benchmark index lost 1.2 percent W-o-W.

During the end of the week, performance across sectors was mixed as 3 of 5 indices advanced. The insur- ance index gained the most, up 1.4 percent on the back of price appreciation in Continental Re-insurance (+6.4%) and AIICO (+1.6%). Similarly, the consumer goods and the oil & gas indices gained 1.1 percent and 0.3 percent W-oW respectively due to investors taking positions in Nestle (+1.4%), International Breweries (+1.8%), Mobil (+10.0%) and Total (+0.2%).

On the flip side, the industrial and banking indices declined by 5.3 percent and 0.8 percent W-o-W respectively due to sell-offs in Dangote Cement (-4.2%), WAPCO (-12.5%), GTB (-1.4%) and Access Bank (-3.9%).

Investor sentiment strengthened with market breadth increasing to 1.2x from 0.7x in the previous week following 28 stocks that advanced against 23 that declined.

The best-performing stocks for the week were Prestige Assurance (+41.1%), PZ Cussons (+18.3%) and Flourmill (+15.1%) while Ikeja Hotel (-18.5%), WAPCO (-12.5%) and Law and Union Insurance (-8.8%) led the losers’ chart for the week.