Investment analysts at Bancorp Securities Limited, one of Nigeria’s investment research firms, on Monday projected that trading in the nation’s equities market would be upbeat ahead of investors’ expectations towards the third quarter earnings reports by listed entities.
Specifically, in the firm’s ‘Weekly Stock Recommendations: Oct 17th – Oct 21st 2022’ sourced by our correspondent, the experts predicted: “Ahead of expectation towards Q3 earnings reporting season, we expect market activities to be slightly supported in the immediate as investors cherry-pick stocks with good fundamentals.”
Also, they recommended some blue chip stocks, including WAPCO (Lafarge Africa Plc), MTNN (MTN Nigeria Plc), ZENITH (Zenith Bank Plc), and GTCO (Guaranty Trust Bank Plc), as strong buy for investors based on the entities’ performances.
For instance, on why they recommended ZENITH stock as strong buy, the investment experts stated: “We maintain a Buy recommendation on the stock with a target price target of N30.00 on the back of the recent H1 2022 results: stable asset quality; capital adequacy (CAR 21.0% ) and sustainable long-term dividend policy.”
The firm’s analysts recalled that the equities market sentiment was positive last week, with price recovery of some selected large capitalized stocks in the four trading days, adding that the improved performance was buoyed by price appreciation in BUA CEMENT (+8.65%), and some tier-one banks namely, GTCO (+5.92%), ACCESSCORP (+5.62%), and ZENITH (+2.30).
As a result, the NGX-ASI inched upward by 0.46% w/w to close at 47,569.04 points and YTD return moderated to 11.36% (previously: 10.85%) just as the market capitalization also increased to N25.91tn causing investors to gain N118.52bn w/w.
Meanwhile, during the week in review, trading activity was mixed as total value traded was up by 34.84% to N11.92 billion while total volume traded declined by 16.34% to 491.82 million units
Data provided by the market’s managers indicated that across the sectorial front, performance was also mixed with the indices under our purview.
The industrial index led the gainers’ chart with +3.17% gain due to price appreciation in BUACEMENT. The Banking index was next up (+1.93%) and Insurance (+1.72%) which recorded gain due to price appreciation in ACCESSCORP, GTCO, ZENITH, WAPIC, SOVEREIGN TRUST and CONERSTONE.
Conversely, Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods Indices fell by 2.13% w/w 0.74% w/w due to losses recorded in, CADBURY INTERBREW, SEPLAT and JAPAULGOLD.
