Activity on the Lebanese stock market rose during the sixth month of the year 2020 as a result of five block trades involving a total of 2,279,635 shares. More specifically, volume traded on the BSE soared by 34.30% to 9,040,647 shares during the month of June, from 6,731,749 shares in May. Similarly, value traded increased by 2.73% month-on-month to $28.53 million, from $27.77 million in May. Trades mainly comprised banking sector stocks, which controlled 79.47% of the total traded volume, followed by real estate stocks (20.51%) and industry & trading stocks (0.02%). The market capitalization of listed stocks widened to around $6.36 billion by end of June, from nearly $5.98 billion at end of May, yet remained much lower than the circa $8.58 billion reading recorded in June of last year.

On a cumulative basis however, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 55.55% year-on-year to around 83.33 million shares during the first half of the current year partly owing to the lockdown that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak, with value traded sinking by 90.63% over the same period to about $75.11 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) of listed stocks ended the sixth month of 2020 higher at 0.731x, compared to 0.599x in May mainly as a result of the sizeable increase in the prices of Solidere “A” and “B” shares.

Overall, trading activity was stronger during the month of June 2020, as evidenced by the increase in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.46%, up from 0.35% in May. The turnover ratio, however, reached 4.28% on a cumulative basis by end of the first half of this year, compared to 10.67% in the same period last year as a result of the economic meltdown and lack of political consensus on Lebanon’s reform journey.