Activity on the Lebanese stock market lost steam during the second month of 2024 with volume traded decreasing by 43.67% month-on-month to 1,129,048 shares, compared to 2,004,203 shares in January and value traded contracting by 35.52% to $65.76 million, from around $101.99 million a month earlier. Trades mainly consisted of real estate stocks (70.33% of total number of shares traded) followed by banking (25.35%) and industry & trading (4.32%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies dropped by 12.49% in February to $17.99 billion yet came in 10.23% higher year-on-year when compared to the $16.33 billion reading reported in February 2023. The monthly decrease in the market capitalization owes to the contraction in the prices of heavy market capitalization-weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” (14.24% monthly decrease), Solidere “B” (17.95% monthly drop), Bank Audi listed shares (14.89% monthly contraction) and Byblos Bank listed shares (4.11% monthly drop).

On an annual basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE fell by 87.71% YTD February 2024 to 3.13 million shares while the value of shares traded increased by 142.75% to $167.75 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 February lower at 5.971x from 7.105x in January, noting that it stood at 5.536x in February 2023 at a time when the prices of Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $72.15 and $71.10 respectively, compared to closing prices of $77.70 for Solidere “A” shares and $74.75 for “Solidere “B” shares as at end of February 2024.

Overall, trading activity grew thinner in February 2024 as evidenced by the drop in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.06%, down from 0.10% a month earlier. Similarly, the turnover ratio decreased to 0.16% by the end of the first two months of this year, compared to 1.29% in the same period last year.