The stocks of Honeywell Flour Mill and Eterna Oil led the gainers’ table at the end of trading on Wednesday, as the All-Share Index of the Nigerian Exchange Limited depreciated marginally to settle at 63,757.23 base points from 63,766.72 recorded on Tuesday.
This came a day after the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos granted Honeywell Flour Mills N72.2bn in damages in its case against Ecobank Nigeria.
The legal dispute stemmed from a series of allegations and counterclaims between Honeywell Flour Mills and Ecobank.
At the end of trading, the market cap also fell by N5bn to N34.716tn from N34.721tn on Tuesday.
A total of 473,492,114 million shares worth over N10.081bn were traded on the floor of the NGX in 7,403 deals. The year-to-date returns settled at 24.40 per cent.
The fight for domination between the bears and bulls was reflected in the number of gainers and losers on the Exchange, with 27 stocks recording losses while 24 stocks posted gains.
Some investors capitalised on their positions in some bellwether shares, leading to profit-taking in Geregu (-10.00 per cent), Zenith Bank (-1.68 per cent), Wapco (-1.03 per cent), Accesscorp (-0.60 per cent), and FBNH (-0.56 per cent).
On the other side, there was an appreciation in the share price of Honeywell (+10.00 per cent). Other notable gainers include Eterna (+9.98 per cent), PZ (+8.99 per cent), NB (+4.47 per cent), MTNN (+1.85 per cent), and GTCO (+0.87 per cent).
In terms of sectoral performances, three of the five sub-sector gauges tracked closed in green, with the NGX Insurance, NGX Consumer Goods, and NGX Oil/Gas indices experiencing declines of 0.52 per cent, 0.48 per cent, and 0.62 per cent, respectively, while the NGX Banking and NGX Industrial indexes registered gains of 2.05 per cent and 0.06 per cent, respectively.
In terms of volume, JapaulGold emerged as the most actively traded stock, with 77.98 million shares worth N64.59m changing hands in 355 deals.
