Bancorp Securities Limited’s investment experts on Monday predicted sustained positive sentiments in the nation’s equities market this week on the back of last week’s trading sessions’ impressive indices.
The equities market closed green last Friday as bulls regained control of the trading, thereby raising the All Share Index (ASI) by 1.06% to close at 48,881.93 points just as the market capitalization appreciated by N281 billion.
The experts Bancorp Securities, one of Nigeria’s leading investment research and consultancy services providers, in the firm’s ‘Weekly Stock Recommendations: Dec 12-Dec 17 2022’ predicted: “We expect the current trend of positive sentiment to persist ahead of the year-end earnings season.”
The analysts, based on the projected bright outlook of the market this week, recommended four blue chip stocks as strong buy for investors. The stocks include ZENITH, GTCO, WAPCO and MTNN.
Justifying their recommendations of the four stocks as strong buy for investors, the experts partly hinged their stance for ZENITH on the listed firm’s recent financial and other performance indices.
They projected: “The Group is poised to sustain the strong performance trajectory while adapting to changes in the regulatory environment and focusing on creative initiatives to mitigate inflationary trends, foreign exchange pressures and the growing competitive environment.”
Also, they recommended GTCO as strong buy partly to the fact that “the Group’s balance sheet remained well structured and resilient with total assets and shareholders’ funds closing at N5.81 trillion and N872.8 billion, respectively.”
In addition, the analysts maintained that the lender’s “strong capital ratios and asset quality were sustained as CAR, NPL ratio, and Cost of Risk (COR) closed at 20.7%, 5.6%, and 0.2% in September 2022”, amongst other assessment parameters.
Meanwhile, the equities market sustained bullish stance for the fourth consecutive week last week as investors gained profit worth N396.13 billion from four of the five trading sessions.
Following the strong performance of the listed stocks on the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) last week, the benchmark index rose by 1.51% w/w to 48,881.93 points while the market capitalisation appreciated to N26.62 trillion. The year-to-date (Y-T-D) return strengthened to 14.43%, from the 12.73% in the preceding week.
Investment experts attributed the upbeat market performance to price appreciation and bargain hunting in some of the industrial goods, banking and consumer goods stocks.
