The controversy surrounding the inability of Emirates Airlines to repatriate its $80 million revenue negatively affected the trading at the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday.
As a result, the domestic stock market further depreciated by 0.29 per cent on the back of profit-taking in almost all the key sectors of the bourse.
Emirates Airlines announced that it will halt all its flights to Nigeria by September just before proper trading activities resumed on the floor of the exchange. This triggered panic selling of Nigerian stocks during the trading day.
Only the banking sector closed in the green territory by 0.18 per cent as the insurance space lost 1.41 per cent, the industrial goods counter depreciated by 0.51 per cent, the consumer goods index fell by 0.33 per cent, while the energy counter declined by 0.10 per cent.
Consequently, the All-Share Index (ASI) depleted by 144.79 points to 49,546.38 points from 49,691.17 points, while the market capitalisation shed N78 billion to close at N26.724 trillion verse N26.802 trillion in the earlier session.
Investor sentiment was strongly weak yesterday as the stock exchange ended with 24 depreciating stocks and 12 appreciating equities due to the disturbing development.
NEM Insurance lost 9.98 per cent to trade at N3.97, Okomu Oil depreciated by 9.96 per cent to N195.30, University Press went down by 9.91 per cent to N1.91, Lasaco Assurance shed 9.57 per cent to sell for N1.04, while Multiverse weakened by 8.70 per cent to N2.10.
On the flip side, FTN Cocoa gained 10.00 per cent to close at 33 Kobo, Regency Assurance rose by 8.70 per cent to 25 Kobo, Prestige Assurance improved by 8.33 per cent to 52 Kobo, Red Star Express climbed higher by 5.88 per cent to N2.70, while Caverton increased by 3.96 per cent to N1.05.
During the session, a total of 147.0 million stocks worth N2.7 billion were traded in 3,180 deals as against the 128.8 million stocks worth N4.1 billion traded in 3,492 deals a day earlier, representing an increase in the volume of transactions by 14.13 per cent, a decline in the value of trades by 35.75 per cent and a reduction in the number of deals by 8.93 per cent.
A breakdown showed that FBN Holdings accounted for 39.0 million units valued at N431.9 million, UBA contributed 13.0 million units worth N91.2 million, Access Holdings recorded 10.2 million units worth N84.4 million, GTCO sold 6.5 million units for N132.2 million, while Stanbic IBTC transacted 6.2 million units worth N172.9 million.
Last month, Emirates asked Hadi Sirika, minister of aviation, to support the repatriation of its revenue, amounting to $85 million.
Nigeria is facing a forex exchange crisis and this has seen the naira depreciate against the dollar.
