Bancorp Securities Limited, one of Nigeria’s leading investment research firms, has predicted that trading in the Nigerian exchange this week will based on last week trading sessions’ performance, adding that it, however, expects investors to take position ahead of the interim dividend season and half-year results.
In the firm’s equities market trading forecasts titled ‘Weekly Stock Recommendations: Jul 13th – Jul 15th, 2022’, analysts also recommended GTCO, ZENITH, UBA, WAPCO and MTNN, to investors as strong buys based on the listed companies’ recent performances.
For instance, they hinged their recommendation on UBA as a strong buy on the lender’s Q1’22 financial results, which indicated that the bank was on track to meet year-end projections.
Bancorp Securities further projected on UBA stock: “Both interest and non-interest income increased by double digits, which reflected in bottom-line growth. We anticipate that this performance will continue due to stronger loan growth compared to 2021 and an increasing focus on digital banking.”
On WAPCO, Bancorp Securities investment experts noted that the company improved in its financial performance in Q1, 2022 and other indices, adding that “the company’s efforts in optimizing costs through plant efficiency yielded positive results in the period as cost margin declined by 300 basis points to 53%.
“We expect the growth momentum to persist into the subsequent quarters of 2022, driven by sustained product demand. We also expect sustained cost optimization to drive bottom line growth”, the researchers added.
The firm recalled that transaction on the equities market last week closed negative amid mixed sentiment, with the market capitalization declining by N139 billion to close at N27.803 trillion.
Similarly, it stated the NGX All-Share Index shed 0.53% to close at 51,557.41 basis points, due to sell-offs in International Breweries, Union Bank of Nigeria (UBN), FBN Holdings (FBNH), FCMB Group and NASCON Allied Industries.
On the activity level during the trading sessions last week, Bancorp Securities reported that equities market’s activity was down as volume and value traded decreased by 55.8% and 42.33% w/w respectively to 822.4mn units and N10.336bn.
