Airtel Africa, Dangote Cement, others sustain Nigerian equity market downtrend

Nigerian equity market declined for the third consecutive trading days on Wednesday, driven by losses suffered by Airtel Africa, Dangote Cement, 20 other stocks.

NGX All-Share Index plunged by 577.19 absolute points, representing a decline of 1.48% to close at 38,446.09 points while the market capitalization lost N301 billion to close at N20.04 trillion as the loss so far this year worsened to -4.5%.

SEPLAT and MRS emerged as top of the 5 gainers, appreciating by 10.00% while AIRTELAFRICA and CILEASING emerged as the top loser (by percentage points) with depreciation of -10.00%.

The volume of equities traded declined by 24.9% to 153.6 million units while value traded increased by 32.9% to ₦2.4billion.

The most traded stocks by volume were UACN (10.0m units), ZENITH (9.6m units), and FIDELITY (8.7m units) while SEPLAT (₦1.1bn), ZENITH (₦222.8m), and WAPCO (₦111.8m) led by value.

The AFR-ICT index led the laggards, down 5.2% due to sell-pressure on AIRTELAF (-10.0%) and the Banking and Insurance indices fell by 0.6% apiece on the back of price depreciation in ZENITH (-2.1%), GUARANTY (-0.5%), CUSTODIAN (-2.5%), and AIICO (-3.1%).

Also, the Consumer Goods index also lost, down 32bps following sell-offs in DANGSUGAR (-3.9%), and INTBREW (-0.9%).

However, the Oil & Gas and Industrial Goods indices rose by 7.1% and 0.9% respectively as a result of buying interest in SEPLAT (+10.0%), MRS (+10.0%), and DANGCEM  (+0.5%).