Month end selling activities among select bellwethers pulled the equities market index into the negative territory by -122bps. Weak buying in Dangcem (-3.23%) following its less impressive Q1 earnings persisted and was the biggest influencer on the day. Decline in Nestle (-1.94%) dominated the consumers’ performance of -0.67% notwithstanding Dangflour’s (+9.94%) continued rally. On the flip side, late gains in Zenith (+0.95%), UBA (+1.49%) and FBNH (0.69%) suppressed the impact of aggressive selling in Guaranty (-1.35%) among the banks whilst oil & gas majors – Seplat (+1.23%) and FO (+9.97%) advanced to taper some losses on the day.
Market turnover was impressive at N8.2bn ($22.6m) dominated by local crosses in CCNN ($5.1m) and offshore block trades in Unilever ($3.9m). Ytd loss on the index widened to -7.22%. We expect the market to firm up on renewed bargain hunting in the next session.
