The Nairobi Securities Exchange witnessed a surge in trading activity, with a 57% increase in volume and a 106% increase in turnover on Friday.
Sasini Tea and Coffee led the gainers, while Home Afrika recorded the largest decline.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) ended the last trading day (Friday) with a total of 10,191,600 shares traded in 750 deals, corresponding to a market value of KES 174,654,599.00.
This represents a 57% increase in volume and a 106% increase in turnover compared to the trading day on Thursday, despite a 2% decline in deals.
The current market capitalization of the NSE stands at KES 1.52 trillion.
Out of the 42 NSE-listed equities that participated in trading, 13 ended with gains while 20 recorded losses. Sasini Tea and Coffee led the gainers with a 9.24% increase in share price, closing at KES 26.00 per share.
This was followed by Kenya Power & Lighting Company (+4.93%), Eveready East Africa (+3.82%), and Sameer Africa (+3.35%).
On the other hand, Home Afrika recorded the largest decline with an end-of-day price depreciation of 8.82%, closing at KES 0.31 per share.
Other losers included Diamond Trust Bank Kenya (-6.34%), Longhorn Publishers (-4.29%), and Unga Group (-3.46%).
In terms of volume, Safaricom led with 8.29 million traded shares.
Other companies with high trading volumes included Equity Group Holdings (682,900 shares), Co-operative Bank of Kenya (173,400 shares), and Centum Investment Company (162,700 shares).
Performance of NSE market indices
During the week, the equities market was on a downward trend, with the Nairobi All Share Index (NASI) experiencing the largest decline of 2.2%.
The NSE 25, NSE 10, and NSE 20 also declined by 1.5%, 1.4%, and 0.8% respectively. This has resulted in year-to-date (YTD) losses of 24.0%, 9.3%, and 20.2% for NASI, NSE 20, and NSE 25, respectively.
The market performance was primarily driven by losses recorded by large-cap stocks such as Safaricom, Bamburi, and DTB-K, which declined by 4.8%, 3.5%, and 3.3%, respectively.
However, these losses were offset by gains recorded by stocks such as Standard Chartered Bank-Kenya, ABSA Bank, and EABL, which increased by 2.2%, 0.9%, and 0.8%, respectively.
Equities turnover increased by 17.2% to USD 8.9 million from USD 7.6 million recorded the previous week, bringing the YTD total turnover to USD 569.2 million.
Foreign investors remained net sellers for the fourth consecutive week, with a net selling position of USD 3.9 million.
The market is currently trading at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 4.9x, significantly below the historical average of 12.2x, and a dividend yield of 8.9%, higher than the historical average of 4.3%.
Notably, NASI’s Price/Earnings to Growth (PEG) ratio currently stands at 0.6x, indicating that the market is undervalued relative to its future growth.
