August 1, 2017/Cordros Research
Click here to download PDF Copy of Report
EQUITIES
- The bulls resurfaced in the equities market after two days of consecutive sell-off to open the first trading day of the month positive. The NSE ASI appreciated by 2.43% to 36,720.62 points.
- Today’s performance improved the Year-to-Date returns to 36.64% and reduced the Week-to-Date loss to 0.39% respectively.
- Positive returns were recorded in most sectoral indices save for the Oil and Gas (-1.25%) index which recorded loses owing to profit taking in FO (-4.70%) and OANDO (-0.18%) stocksas investors reacted to the companies’ H1 results. Meanwhile, the Industrial Goods (+1.67), Insurance (+1.21%), Consumer Goods (+1.19%), and Banking (+0.20%) indices appreciated owing to demand for the shares of DANGCEM (+7.26%), MANSARD (+0.10%), NESTLE (+21.30%) and STANBIC (+3.04%) shares.
- Market breadth was positive; reflecting the broad uptrend in today’s trading session with 32 gainers and 20 losers. Total volume traded increased by 73.33% to 849.60 million shares valued at N94.05 billion and exchanged in 5,602 deals.
- Corporate Releases: H1-2017 Earnings; MRS (PAT: N3.80 billion vs. N909.75 million); STERLNBANK (PAT: N703.47 million vs. N4.02 billion); MAYBAKER (PAT: N94.86 million vs. N30.09 million); Q1-2017 Earnings; INTBREW (PAT: N1.36 billion vs. –N1.66 billion); FLOURMILL (PAT: N4.53 billion vs. N4.42 billion)
- We expect mixed reactions in tomorrow’s session as investors continue to respond to corporate releases.
CURRENCY
- The apex bank, yesterday, sold USD 195 million at the interbank market – comprising USD 100 million to the wholesale segment, USD 50 million in the SMEs segment and USD 45 million in the invisibles segment. As at the time of writing – in the interbank market – the NGN depreciated against the GBP (-16.86%) and EUR (-16.50%) to close at N483.71 and N431.72, respectively while the LCY appreciated 0.02% against the USD. However, there were mixed reactions in the parallel market, as the naira strengthened against the USD (+0.55%), weakened against the GBP (-0.21%) and closed flat against the EUR at respective rates of N363, N475 and N422. Meanwhile, in the I/E FX window the NGN/USD (+0.35%) strengthened to N366.59.
FIXED INCOME AND MONEY MARKET
- Despite liquidity mop up yesterday via N60.79 billion worth of OMO bills and debit for FX sales of USD195 million, the overnight rate further contracted by 25 bps to 5.50% as market anticipates the maturity of OMO bills worth N85.42 billion on Thursday.
- Consequent to the dealing members’ inability to provide two-way quotes following the three-day suspension order by the FMDQ to enable them clear backlogs of unsettled trade, the NTB space remained quiet with nil movement in yields. Meanwhile, there will be NTB auction tomorrow, worth N229.1 million comprising of N29.14 million (91-day), N80 million (182-day) and N120 million (364 -day) bills respectively.
- Similarly, the bonds space also closed flat following the FMDQ order as stated above.