In the nine-months to September 30, 2015 stocks buyers at the Nigerian bourse displayed less interest in adding stocks listed on the Alternative Securities Market (ASeM) to their equities portfolio, BusinessDay trend watch shows.
The Alternative Securities Market (ASeM) is our specialised board for emerging businesses – small and mid-sized companies with high growth potential. It gives such companies the opportunity to raise long-term capital from the capital market at relatively low cost, allowing them to grow and institutionalise.
Our check on some of the listed companies on ASeM shows that investors shift away from these stock impacted ASeM stocks prices as they either remained static or declined when compared to the year open trading day of January 5, 2015.
For instance, Adswitch plc which opened the year N1.63 per share has not changed. Listed under the industrial goods sector of ASeM, Adswitch currently has market capitalisation of N203.758million and outstanding shares of 125,005,250 units – which refers to its stocks currently held by all its shareholders.
Afrik Pharmaceuticals plc remained at 50kobo per share; Anino International plc has not changed at 25kobo; Capital Oil plc was also static at 50kobo over the nine months period in review.
Afrik Pharmaceuticals plc is listed on ASeM healthcare sector with market capitalisation of N12.449million and shares outstanding of 24,898,850 units. Listed on the oil & gas sector, Anino International plc has N6.050million in market capitalisation and shares outstanding of 24,200,000 units. While Capital Oil plc –also listed on oil & gas sector has N2.928billion in market capitalisation and shares outstanding of 5,857,548,000 units.
Also, the share price of Juli plc remained unchanged at N1.75kobo over the review nine months period due to un-increasing demand for the shares. The company is listed on the services sector of the ASeM has N349.833million in market capitalisation and 199,905,004 units as shares outstanding.
Mcnichols plc lost its value to N1.26kobo as at September 30, 2015 from N1.48kobo as at January 5, 2015. The company listed in the consumer goods sector of ASeM has 297,000,000 units outstanding shares and market cap of N374.220million.
Likewise, Navitus Energy plc declined to 63kobo from year open level of 66kobo; Omoluabi Savings And Loans plc remained static at 92kobo as demand fails to increase; same is applicable to Rokana Industries plc which has not changed at 60kobo. Smart Products Nigeria plc declined to 98kobo from N1.11 at the beginning of the year.
Navitus Energy plc is listed on the oil & gas sector of the ASeM. The company’s market cap is N62.118million and its shares outstanding are 98,600,000 units.
Omoluabi Savings And Loans plc which has shares outstanding of 5,000,000,000 units and market cap of N4.6billion is listed on the financial services sector of the NSE ASeM; while Rokana Industries plc which is listed on the consumer goods sector has N30million capitalisation and shares outstanding of 50,000,000 units.
Smart Products Nigeria plc is listed under the construction/real estate sector has N44.1million in capitalisation and shares outstanding of 45,000,000 units.
Barely two years and five months ago, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) re-launched the Alternative Securities Market (ASeM) with the aims to offer small and mid-sized companies with high growth potential several options to liquidity from the public, either by Initial Public Offering (IPO), offer for subscription, offer for sale, or listing by introduction.
Companies that list on the ASeM are supported by three main pillars: their Designated Advisers (Das), their Growth Ambassadors and the NSE’s institutional services.
While Designated Advisers provide professional advice to clients on their responsibilities when applying to be listed and their ongoing obligations to maintain their status once listed, Growth Ambassadors (GA) Programme was introduced to further support the objectives of ASeM in nurturing SMEs.
Iheanyi Nwachukwu
