BUA Foods Plc, one of the leading food and fast-moving consumer goods companies in the country, recorded a gain of N119 billion at the end of Thursday’s trading session to top the gainers’ list for the day.
Market watchers believe investors are optimistic about reaping big from the N63 billion dividend declared by the company in its unaudited 2022 full-year results.
The gain: Checks by Nairametrics showed that the food stock grew by 8.87% to N81.00 per share from N74.00 recorded the previous day.
Further checks showed that BUA Foods closed the trading day (Thursday, February 23, 2023) at N81.00 per share and N1.458 trillion in market capitalization, as against N74.00 per share and a market capitalization of N1.339 trillion at the beginning of trading the previous day. Hence, the company gained N119 billion or 8.87%.
Financial performance: BUA Foods Plc released its 2022 unaudited full-year results on Monday, January 30, 2023, reporting a pre-tax profit of N100.63 billion.
- This represents a 29.44% increase from the N1.7 billion the company reported during the same period in 2021.
- The growth in pre-tax profits was due to the increase in sales of sugar products despite inflationary pressure and depreciation of the naira.
- Its 2022 revenue was up 25% year-on-year to N418 billion as against N333.27 billion in 2021. The revenue from sugar products accounted for 65% of the total revenue achieved by the company during the period under revenue.
- BUA Foods declared a dividend of N63 billion for 2022 which translates to N3.50 per share.
Overall market performance: The local bourse sustained positive sentiment as the benchmark index advanced by 0.61% to close at 54,646.38 points, the highest level since 15 July 2008.
Gains in BUA Foods which rose by +8.87%, Lafarge Africa by +1.18% as well as Tier-1 banks, Zenith Bank (+0.60%), GTCO (+-0.40%) and FBNH (+0.43%) drove the market’s overall performance.
The gain puts the index on the path of achieving weekly rallies ahead of the 2023 presidential election. The year-to-date (YTD) return rose to 6.62%, while market capitalization gained N180.23 billion to close at N29.77 trillion.
Further analysis of the day’s market activities showed trade turnover settled lower relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions down by 52.92%.
A total of 142.04m shares valued at N1.85 billion were exchanged in 2,651 deals. UBA with a gain of +0.60% led the volume chart with 32.42 million units traded while Zenith Bank also with a gain of +0.60% led the value chart in deals worth N11.53 million.
