Activity on the Lebanese stock market improved during the fourth month of the year 2020, with volume traded on the BSE rising by 138.25% to 10,769,186 shares during the month of April, from 4,520,173 shares in March. Similarly, value traded increased by 52.58% month-on-month to $23.97 million, from $15.71 million in March. Trades were mainly concentrated on banking sector stocks, which controlled 90.90% of the total traded volume, followed by real estate stocks (9.10%), with no activity on industry & trading stocks being recorded. Market capitalization widened to around $6.53 billion by end of April, from nearly $6.20 billion at end of March, and remained much lower than the circa $9.02 billion reading recorded in April of last year.

On a cumulative basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 74.67% year-on-year to just below 46.53 million shares during the first four months of the current year, with value traded sinking by 94.91% over the same period to about $39.85 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) of listed stocks ended the fourth month of 2020 higher at 0.662x, compared to 0.543x in March mainly as a result of the appreciation in the prices of listed real estate stocks. The Price to Book Value multiple for the month of April also outperformed last year’s reading of 0.635x at end of April 2019.

Overall, trading activity was more dynamic during the month of April 2020, as evidenced by the increase in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.55%, up from 0.23% in March. The turnover ratio, however, was very thin on a cumulative basis reaching 2.39% by end of the first four months of this year, compared to 10.45% in the same period last year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown that followed, not to mention Lebanon’s crippled economic activity since quite some time now.