Activity on the Lebanese stock market showed mixed results during the first month of 2024 with volume traded increasing by 3.09% month-on-month to 2,004,203 shares, compared to 1,944,115 shares in December and value traded contracting by 27.94% to $101.99 million, from around $141.54 million a month earlier. Trades mainly consisted of real estate stocks (61.51% of total number of shares traded) followed by banking (38.43%) and industry & trading (0.06%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies added 0.41% in January to around $20.56 billion and 37.19% year-on-year when compared to the $14.99 billion reading reported in January 2023. The monthly increase in the market capitalization owes to the appreciation in the prices of heavy market capitalization-weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” (1.68% monthly increase), Solidere “B” (1.28% monthly rise) and BLOM Bank listed shares (4.29% monthly rise) among others.

On an annual basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE fell by 92.01% in January 2024 from 25.09 million shares a year earlier with the value of shares traded increasing by 93.63% from $52.67 million. As far as trading multiples are concerned, the weighted average Price to Book Value (P/BV) multiple of listed stocks ended the last trading day of January higher at 7.105x from 6.952x in December, noting that it stood at 4.838x a year earlier at a time when the prices of Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $63.80 and $63.40 respectively, compared to closing prices of $90.60 for Solidere “A” shares and $91.10 for “Solidere “B” shares as at end of January 2024.

Overall, trading activity remained quite stable in January 2024 as evidenced by the flat-lining of the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) at 0.10%, yet slowed down markedly on an annual basis when the turnover ratio stood at 1.27% in January 2023.