Market Comment - 23.09.2021

Top Caps buoy ZSE gains… The market continued to edge higher in Thursday’s trades spurred mainly by top capitalised counters. The primary All Share Index ticked up 3.11% to 7374.18pts while, the Blue-Chips Index advanced 3.70% to close at 4134.50pts, breaching the 4000pts mark. The Mining Index recovered from prior sessions’ losses as it added 0.05% to 6123.24pts while, the segregated Industrials were 3.15% stronger at 24331.67pts. Banking group NMB led the gainers for the second consecutive session after surging 15.05% to $14.9559. Simbisa climbed 9.17% to $49.0145, post the release of its FY21 results in which the fast foods retail recorded a PAT of $2.16bn which is a 96.42% improvement from prior comparable period and declared a dividend of $0.7900. Retailer OK Zimbabwe rose 8.03% to trade at $17.7497 while, Meikles extended 7.34% to settle at $105.1955, having traded a high of $107.0000. Seed manufacturer SeedCo capped the gainers list as it rose 6.75% to $80.0798. Nampak led the laggards of the day as it succumbed 4.10% to $11.5076 while, National Tyre services trailed after easing 2.04% to $8.0000. General Beltings trimmed 1.15% to $1.8284 while, pharmaceutical group Medtech fell 0.66% to $0.2100. National foods capped the shakers of the day on a negligible 0.0016% fall to close at $628.0000. The market breadth reflected a strong rally as twenty-eight counters gained against five fallers to register a positive breadth of twenty-three. Activity aggregates traded mixed as turnover was 9.48% softer at $123.31m while, volumes soared 70.61% to see 8.71m shares exchanging hands. First Capital, Bindura, Cassava, Medtech and Star Africa drove volume aggregates, contributing 23.36%,12.59%, 10.97%, 10.96% and 10.11% of the aggregate respectively. Value drivers of the day were Cassava, Meikles and OKZIM with a combined outturn of 43.47%. The Old Mutual ETF recorded a turnover of $347,195.00 from 138,894 units which exchanged hands in twenty-two trades. Elsewhere, no trades were recorded on the VFEX.