Heavyweight Dangote Cement lifted the Nigerian Stock Exchange into a positive territory as the bulls dominated the first day of trading this week.
Stock value appreciated 2.02% with the Benchmark index closing at 23,977.10bps.
Sectorial indices monitored by the exchange showed mixed performance, with the banking sector and Dangcem, making a big difference.
Dangote Cement appreciated 7.8 per cent, while a host of banks also added more value. Unitybnk gained 3.03 %, GTB 1.56%.
Dangote Cement shares rose after it said it plans to build new cement plants in Nigeria and increase local production capacity to 38.25 metric tonnes per year from 29.25 metric tonnes.
The new plants will help it cut the cost of production and lower product prices in the market, it said. Dangote Cement, which accounts for a third of the market’s capitalisation, traded at 134.98 naira ($0.6783) at the close.
However Okomuoil, Guinness, , Conoil and Continsure all closed in the red.
The All Share Index ASI year-to-date stands at -15.49% while market capitalization gained N475billion.
Volume and value of stocks traded however plummeted. 190million units of shares valued at N1.692bn were exchanged. The volume and value all declined.
At the close of today’s session, 17 stocks advanced relative to 22 decliners while 51 remained unchanged.
Top in the gainers chart are DANGCEM (N134.00); UNILEVER (N31.84) & PZ (N21.90) while CONOIL (N20.25), PHARMDEKO (N2.14) and TIGERBRANDS (N1.19) led the decliners.
Also today, there was a cross sale of 18 million units of ZENITHBANK valued at N227.34 million at N12.73 per unit. The shares were bought by local investors.
STANBIC also recorded a cross of 20.5 million units at N14.00 valued at N287million. It was exchanged between foreign investors.