Nigerian stocks go higher

It was a week of resurgence for the Nigerian Stock Exchange as both the all-share index and the market capitalization closed higher Friday, than the record reached a week earlier.

The ASI gained 128 points to close at 22,665, from 22,537 recorded Thursday. The market capitalization also increased to N7.22 trillion, with the price increases in several stocks such as Nestle, Lafarge Wapco, Flourmills, UACN and Mobil, boosting yesterday’s milestone of N7.188 trillion, with N34 billion. In the week, the index closed higher by 2.52 per cent.

Remarkable also was the value of transactions at the exchange today. It was N4.88 billion on 4,234 deals, again higher than the N4.68 billion splashed on stocks the previous day, in 4,440 deals.

Nestle at N439.95 recorded the highest price gain today, adding N20.95 to its last closing price of N419. Mobil closed at N123.01, adding N5.85 to its N117.16 price on Thursday. Lafarge WAPCO, which gave an impressive first quarter report Wednesday gained N2.08, to close at N43.87. Flourmills gained N2.00 and UACN N1.62 to close at N62 and N34.12 respectively.

Nigeria Breweries is still bouncing higher, reaching N112.84 after it gained N1.56.

Other gainer s were Oando, Presco, Skye Bank, ETI, FCMB, Access, Ashaka Cement, Berger Paints, Dangote Flour, CAP and UBA. The latter broke the N4 threshhold, selling at N4.03 after it gained 20 kobo on its Thursday’s price of N3.84.

Dangote Cement and Guinness were the prominent blue chips that recorded modest price losses in trading Friday. Dangote Cement lost N2.56 to close at N119.44 while Guinness after its dismal third quarter report shed N2.00 to end the day at N240. Other price losers were GTB, the toast of the banking sector. It shed 21 kobo and still closed highest in the sector at N17.04. May and Baker UACN Property also lost some kobo, just like NAHCO, which trimmed down by 10kobo to sell at N8.40, after it announced Thursday a 2.2 per cent dip in turnover and 47 per cent in profit level in its first quarter unadited result for 2012. NAHCO’s gross revenue in first quarter 2011 was N1.59 billion. This fell to N1.56billion this year. Its profit after tax in last year ‘s first quarter was N192.5 million. This nose-dived to N101.4 million this year.

A number of stocks, such as Conoil, MRS, NCR, Okomu Oil, Total and Unilever retained their Thursday prices.

According to the analysis by proshareng.com, “The bulls continue to dominate market activities as bargain hunting continued to outweigh sell pressure in the third session just as NSE ASI firms up by +0.84% to maintain northwards movement as market YTD performance stands at +8.72 per cent.
Conversely, trading activities on Friday closed northwards as sentiments remained positive. Consequently, the key benchmark indices inches up by +0.57 per cent while market closed the week with aggregate gain of +2.52per cent.

“Further analysis on acquiring banks since transaction date showed that the share price of Access Bank Plc has recorded 36.97 per cent gain, followed by FCMB with 43.08 per cent gain while Union Bank Plc leads the chart with 108.61 per cent gain. However, Sterling Bank recorded -2.36% loss while ETI closed positive with +0.26 per cent gain recorded.

“In the same vein, the market capitalization in the week appreciated by N177.49 billion (US$1.18 billion) to close at N7.22 trillion (US$48.17billion) as against appreciation by N112.55 billion (US$750.37 million) recorded last week to close at N7.05 trillion (US$ 46.99billion).

“The total volume traded in the week closed at 2.44 billion units valued at N20.74billion (US$138.23 million) compared with 1.96 billion units valued at N17.23 billion (US$114.87 million) exchanged in 23,547 deals last week. The volume transaction in the week when compared with the previous week data moved up by 24.79 per cent as against downwards movement by -4.24 per cent recorded last week. Weekly value also went up by +20.33% as against positive position of +9.54% recorded last week.