In what many investors and market watchers believed to be a systemic gains and will stretch to this week, the local bourse went against predictions and started the new week on the back footing .
This effectively ended the GSE rising sequence of couple of days dating back to last week. The local bourse benchmark on Monday lost a portion of the ground gained over the last week. This was topped by a further decline on the day by the banking sector index, driven by the uncertainty in the banking sector.
In total, out of the 17 GSE listed equities that participated in trading, none of the stocks posted gains, one sustained losses and 16 remained unchanged.
The Only Loser
The only loser, namely Fan Milk, recorded 10 percent share price depreciation. Fan Milk Plc (FML) closed its trading day (Monday, March 20, 2023) at GHS1.62 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 18 pesewas drop from its previous closing price of GHS1.80.
Fan Milk began the year with a share price of GHS3.00 but has since lost 46% off that price valuation, ranking it 38th on the GSE in terms of year-to-date performance. Shareholders’ worries are compounded by the fact that FML has lost 35% of the stock’s value from February 17 to date.
Fan Milk is the 13th most traded stock on the Ghana Stock Exchange over the past three months (Dec 15, 2022 – Mar 20, 2023). FML has traded a total volume of 40,000 shares valued at GHS 97,866 over the period, with an average of 635 traded shares per session. A volume high of 11,033 was achieved on January 27 for the same period.
Fan Milk Plc is currently the 21st most valuable stock on the GSE with a market capitalization of GHS 188 million, which is about 0.279% of the Ghana Stock Exchange equity market.
Regarding the performance of GSE market indices, the benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) pared 2.01 (-0.07%) points to close at 2,710.74 points, representing a 1-week gain of 7.65%, a 4-week gain of 12.27%, and an overall year-to-date gain of 10.92%.
The GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) maintained its value at 1,855.33 points, making it a 1-week loss of 1.57%, a 4-week loss of 6.46%, and a year-to-date loss of 9.61%.
At the end of the first weekday of trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange, a total of 169,826 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 234,124.12, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Friday, March 17), Monday’s data showed 51% improvement in volume but 83% decline in turnover.
MTN Ghana recorded the highest volume of 124,584 traded shares, followed by Societe Generale Ghana (31,683), Benso Oil Palm Plantation (4,040) and Ecobank Ghana (2,500).
The current market capitalization of the Ghana Stock Exchange is GHS 67.5 billion.
