ECOBANK share price continues to surge

Accra, July 18, GNA - New entrant Ecobank Ghana Limited (EBG) and Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) on Tuesday gave the Ghana Stock Exchange's Index another boost to lift the All-Share Index, the main stock index, up by 36.56 points.

Standard Chartered and Ecobank, the second and third highest capitalised equities on the bourse made 4,000 cedis and 298 cedis, respectively, to push the index up to 4,881.23 points from 4,844.67 points despite a significant loss in the share price of Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited.

Speaking to the GNA on the performance of the Exchange for the past three trading days, Nii Ampa-Sowa of the Research Department of Databank Brokerage Limited; said the market's gains had been riding high on the back of the listing of Ecobank last Friday.

He said the Exchange had since registered significant performance evidenced in the change-in-year to date which had moved from 1.3 per cent to 2.35 per cent.

Nii Ampa-Sowa observed that trading in the past few days was skewed towards the financial stocks, which were mainly the banking and insurance stocks.

The fortunes of Ecobank, he said, depended on prospects as perceived by the investor public.

Nii Ampa-Sowa explained that Ecobank was oversubscribed and but due to the terms of its initial public offer had to return the extra money of over 100 per cent of targeted amount. He said the only channel for investors to access the shares, therefore, was to purchase from the secondary market, which is the stock exchange.

He mentioned Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited, Standard Chartered, Enterprise Insurance, Fan Milk Limited and Aluworks Ghana Limited as stocks, which had equally good prospects for the second half of the year.

Total shares traded on Tuesday, however declined from 1,353,000 shares to 491,100 shares. Market capitalisation increased to 97,210.77 billion cedis from Monday's close of 97,100.58 billion cedis.

On the broader market there were three price changes - two positive and a negative.

SCB gained 4,000 cedis at 134,000 cedis followed by EBG which made 298 cedis at 11,500 cedis.

GGBL lost 50 cedis to close trading at 9,780 cedis.

The following are the last prices of the listed equities in cedis:

ABL 1,150 AGA 300,000 ALW 6,800 BAT 3,160 BOPP 5,500 CAL 1,942 CFAO 399 CLYD 1,000 CMLT 1,700 CPC 600

EBG 11,500 +298

EIC 8,122 FML 15,946 GCB 6,312 GGBL 9,780 -50 GWEB 550 HFC 5,400 MLC 2,500 MOGL 54,000 PAF 800 PBC 2,800 PZ 6,510

SCB 134,000 +4,000

SPL 550 SPPC 390 SG-SSB 6,750 SWL 265 TBL 27,000 UNIL 15,400