NGX investors settle for high, mid-cap stocks, gains N400bn

By Chinwendu Obienyi

Investors’ interest in high and mid- capitalized stocks helped navigate Nigeria’s stock market into the green territory as market capitalization grew by over N400 billion at the close of trading on Wednesday.

The market had experienced its first loss of 2022, dropping 0.09 per cent on Tuesday but gains in Jaiz Bank, BUA Foods, MTNN, Academy and Dangote Cement drove the market’s All Share Index (ASI) 1.71 per cent higher to close at 44,608.82 points.

This was even as market capitalisation which opened yesterday’s trading at N23.630 trillion, grew by N404 billion to close at N24.034 trillion.

Analysis of yesterday’s performance showed that the volume of stocks traded stood at 266.32 million units while the value of stocks traded stood at N3.82 billion, exchanged in 4,502 deals.

This is in contrast to 294.5million units and N6.8 billion recorded in the previous trading session.

Meanwhile Dangote Cement Plc has announced the commencement of the second tranche of the shares buyback programme. This comes after the company’s shareholders approved the move at the Annual General Meeting held in May 2021.

A Company’s disclosure, signed by the company’s secretary, Edward Imoedemhe, and filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) said the second tranche of the programme entails that up to 170,003,074 fully paid-up ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each, representing 1 per cent of the currently issued shares, less treasury shares will be repurchased.

The programme is scheduled to commence on the Wednesday, January 19, 2022, and should last for two days to be completed on Thursday, January 20,  2022, or whenever the entire tranche size has been purchased.