Consumer goods, banking, industrial goods sectors lift Nigerian equity market 1.5% w/w

Investors’interest in the Consumer goods, banking and industrial goods sectors spurred the Nigerian equity market to a 1.5% appreciation this week, taking the all-share index to 38,212.01 points.

The Consumer goods sector appreciated 5.14% this week, while the banking sector went up 2.11% and the industrial goods sector gained 2.10% as the market capitalisation increased by ₦292.4billion value to close the week at ₦19.9 trillion and the market performance this year moderated to -5.11%.

Activity level improved as average volume and value rose 0.2% and 36.8% respectively to 209.2m units and ₦2.0bn. The top traded stocks by volume were GTCO (73.9m), FBNH (43.6m), and MBENEFIT (42.4m) while MTNN (₦3.4bn), ZENITH (₦972.9m) and NESTLE (₦931.7m) were the top traded stocks by value.

The leading gainers this week was the Consumer Goods index, up 5.1% w/w on the back of buying interest in VITAFOAM (+12.3%), NESTLE (+10.0%) and NASCON (+9.8%). In the same vein, the Industrial Goods and Insurance indices rose 2.1% and 2.0% w/w respectively as CUTIX (+8.3%), DANGCEM (+4.0%), LINKASSURE (+30.8%) and NEM (+4.2%) closed in the green.

Price appreciation in WEMABANK (+23.3%), UBN (+4.7%) and FCMB (+3.3%) drove the Banking index higher by 1.3% w/w. On the flip side, the Oil & Gas and AFR-ICT indices fell 1.0% and 0.3% w/w respectively due to price depreciation in CONOIL (-4.3%), ETERNA (-1.3%) and AIRTELAF (-1.5%).

This week,41 stocks advanced against 23 that declined with the top-performing stocks being IKEJAHOTEL (+60.0%), LINKASSURE (+30.8%) and WEMABANK (+23.3%) while BOCGAS (-19.0%), REGALINS (-14.3%) and ROYALEX (-12.7%) were the laggards.

Analysts at Afrinvest foresee slight profit-taking at the start of next week but envisage that market performance will be dictated by the performance of the H1:2021 earnings results.