The penultimate trading day of the week saw the benchmark at Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) avoid another decline as it held on to some of its gains and ended the day in the green, albeit on reduced turnover.

In the aggregate, 19 GSE listed equities participated in trading, ending with only one gainer, namely Ecobank Ghana, with 4.88% share price appreciation. There was no loser on the day while the rest of the 18 equities recorded no price movement.

Ecobank Ghana Limited, a member of the pan-African Ecobank chain, closed its trading day (Thursday, September 28, 2023) at GHS4.30 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange, recording GHS0.20 gain over its previous closing price of GHS4.10.

However, Ecobank began the year with a share price of GHS6.64 but has since lost 35.2% off that price valuation, ranking it 38th on the GSE in terms of year-to-date performance. That notwithstanding, shareholders’ fears may be allayed by the 10% increase of EGH share price since August 30, which is sixth best on GSE.

Moreover, Ecobank Ghana is the 10th most traded stock on the Ghana Stock Exchange over the past three months (Jun 30 – Sep 28, 2023). EGH has traded a total volume of 297,257 shares valued at GHS 1.17 million over the period, with an average of 4,718 traded shares per session. A volume high of 123,800 was achieved on September 14 for the same period.

Ecobank Ghana has made very good returns to its shareholders with Return On Average Equity (ROAE) and Return On Average Assets (ROAA) averaging above 35% and 4% respectively over the past 5 years.

Ecobank Ghana Limited is currently the eighth most valuable stock on the GSE with a market capitalization of GHS 1.39 billion, which makes about 1.87% of the Ghana Stock Exchange equity market.

Composite Index Rises

Correspondingly, the gains by Ecobank Ghana Limited translated into a rise in the indices. The benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) inched up 5.93 (0.19%) points to close at 3,172.35, representing a week-on-week gain of 0.13%, a month-on-month gain of 2.35%, and an overall year-to-date gain of 29.81%.

Similarly, the GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) which measure the financial sector stocks including insurance, also increased by 0.6% to reach 1,890.13 points, making it week-on-week gain of 0.46%, a month-on-month gain of 8.31%, and a year-to-date loss of 7.91%.

Despite the inching up of the indices, total volume of transactions declined considerably. At the end of Thursday’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange, a total of 50,505 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 117,187.66, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Wednesday, September 27), the data showed 83% decline in volume.

Fan Milk recorded the highest volume of 20,170 traded shares, followed by MTN Ghana (14,960), Enterprise Group (5,253) and Ecobank Ghana (2,970).

Market capitalization which measures a company’s size and constitute the total cedi market value of a company’s outstanding shares of stock, has witnessed a remarkable improvement in Thursday’s trading session. The market cap surged in excess of GHS1 million, settling at GHS 74.2 billion.