Activity on the Lebanese stock market showed mixed results during the sixth month of 2022, with volume traded dropping by 6.25% to 1,556,020 shares, compared to 1,659,677 shares in May. On the other hand, value traded rose by 2.66% month-on-month to $57.10 million, from $55.62 million a month earlier. Trades mainly consisted of real estate (57.47%), banking (41.90%) and industry & trading (0.63%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies fell by 2.92% month-on-month to just above $14.34 billion yet came in 59.01% higher than the $9.02 billion reading reported in June 2021. The monthly decrease in the market capitalization mainly owes to the contraction in the prices of heavy market capitalization-weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” & “B” and Bank Audi listed shares which witnessed monthly drops of 4.74%, 1.88% and 11.76% on a respective basis.

Similarly on a cumulative basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE plunged by 51.66% year-on-year to around 8.83 million shares during the first half of 2022, while value traded rose by 3.23% annually to about $193.96 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) multiple of listed stocks ended the sixth month of 2022 lower at 4.387x from 4.551x in May, noting it stood at 1.400x in the same month in 2021 at a time when the prices of Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $24.81 and $24.65 respectively, compared to closing prices $59.35 and $59.95 as at end of June of this year.

Overall, trading activity was flat in June 2022, as evidenced by the stable turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) of 0.08%. The turnover ratio, however, fell to 0.45% by end of the first half of this year, compared to 0.94% in the same period last year as investors remained on the sidelines awaiting some glimmer of hope regarding Lebanon’s reform journey.