UBA, Zenith, GTBank drive last week banking stocks deals

In the week ended March 8, 2013, vol­ume in the banking subsector was largely driven by activity in the shares of UBA plc, Zenith Bank plc and Guaranty Trust Bank plc.

Market report last week showed that trading in the shares of the three banks accounted for 464.928 mil­lion shares, representing 43.28 percent, 30.79 per­cent and 24.12 percent of the turnover recorded by the subsector, sector and total equity turnover for the week, respectively.

The Bloomberg NSE Banking Index which opened last week at 412.09 points rose to 414.67 points, while the year-to-date gain stood high at 22.09 percent.

The Financial Services sector accounted for 1.510 billion shares valued at N13.532 billion traded in 17,688 deals. The Banking subsector of the Finan­cial Services sector was the most active during the week (measured by turno­ver volume); with 1.074 bil­lion shares worth N11.229 billion exchanged by in­vestors in 11,333 deals.

The Conglomerates sector, boosted by activ­ity in the shares of Trans­national Corporation of Nigeria Plc of the Diversi­fied Industries subsector followed on the week’s activity chart with a sec­tor turnover of 121.134 million shares valued at N299.812 billion traded in 1,210 deals.

Part of the transactions for last week included 846 units of NewGold Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) valued at N2.035 million traded in 7 deals compared with a total of 2,681 units valued at N6.562 transacted the pre­ceding trading week in 8 deals.

Also included in the transactions for the week in review were 2,536 units of FGN bonds valued at N3.096 million traded last week in 26 deals in con­trast to 1,887 units valued at N2.314 million trans­acted the preceding week in 20 deals. Likewise, 1,000 units of Lagos State Fixed Rate Redeemable Bond valued at N1, 000,000 was traded in 1 deal, while there were no transactions in the Corporate Bonds/Debentures sector.

Meanwhile, a review of the equity price move­ments indicated that thirty-six equities gained while forty-four equities recorded price declines and one hundred and sev­enteen equities remained constant. When com­pared with the preceding week, thirty-eight equities gained while forty-six eq­uities recorded price de­clines and one hundred and thirteen equities re­mained constant