Nigerian stock market closes bearish as NGXGROUP, Courtville, Royalex drag index 0.01%

By Chukwuma Umeorah 

Transactions on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), yesterday, closed on a downward trajectory as the All-Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 0.01 per cent. 

Specifically, the ASI declined by 6.14 basis points, representing a decrease of 0.01 per cent, to close at 55,788.37 points from an opening value of 55,794.51 basis points representing a weekly gain of 0.33 per cent, a monthly gain of 2.62 per cent, and an overall year-to-date (ytd) gain of 8.85 per cent. 

The overall market capitalisation value lost N3.342 billion to close at N30.391 trillion. The market’s negative performance was driven by price depreciation in large and medium capitalised stocks in the financial sector and consumer goods sector namely, NGXGROUP, NPFMCRFBK, COURTVILLE, LINKASSURE and ROYALEX. 

At the end of trading on the local bourse yesterday, a total of 179.028 units of shares corresponding to a market value of N2.547 billion were traded in 4,296 deals. Compared with the previous NGX trading day, the data shows a 35 per cent decline in volume, a 70 per cent decline in turnover, but a 24 per cent improvement in deals. 

Despite depreciating in value, NGXGROUP was the most active stock for the day trading 38.154 million units of shares with corresponding market value of N994.554 million while TRANSCORP exchanged 19.734 million units of shares valued at N26.602 million. STERLINBANK followed with 15.885 million shares traded worth N23.081 million. 

The market breadth was negative with 21 losers and 12 gainers. NGXGROUP led the losers, dropping 9.72 per cent in value and closed at N26.00 per share, followed by NPFM which shed 8.47 per cent closing the day’s trade at N1.73 per share, while COURTVILLE lost 6.25 per cent closing at N0.45 per share. 

On the flip side, UPL emerged best performing stock, after chalking up 9.89 percent in value to close at N2.00 per share, while CWG gained 7.69 per cent closing at N0.98 per share. MULTIVERSE also gained 5.04 per cent and closed the day’s trade at N3.75 per share.