Activity on the Lebanese stock market lost steam during the third month of 2024 amid the Easter holidays. Volume traded fell by 29.39% month-on-month to 797,200 shares, compared to 1,129,048 shares in February and value traded contracted by 77.97% to $14.49 million, from around $65.76 million a month earlier. Trades mainly consisted of banking sector stocks (75.67% of total number of shares traded) followed by real estate (17.83%) and industry & trading (6.50%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies dropped by 0.98% in March to $17.82 billion and came in 5.67% lower year-on-year when compared to the $18.89 billion reading reported in March 2023. The monthly decrease in the market capitalization owes to the contraction in the prices of heavy market capitalization-weighted stocks, namely Byblos Bank listed shares (18.57% monthly decrease), Solidere “A” shares (5.86% monthly drop), Bank Audi GDRs (3.45% monthly contraction) and Solidere “B” shares (0.74% monthly drop) which wiped out the appreciation in the prices of BLOM Bank listed shares (25.00% monthly appreciation), Bank Audi listed shares (17.50% monthly rise) and BLOM Bank GDRs (16.67% monthly increase).

On an annual basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE fell by 85.21% in the first quarter of 2024 to 3.93 million shares while the value of shares traded increased by 43.64% to $182.23 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 March lower at 5.656x from 5.971x in February, noting that it stood at 6.855x in March 2023 at a time when the prices of Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $87.85 and $86.05 respectively, compared to closing prices of $73.15 for Solidere “A” shares and $74.20 for “Solidere “B” shares as at end of March 2024.

Overall, trading activity grew thinner in March 2024 as evidenced by the drop in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.04%, down from 0.06% a month earlier. Similarly, the turnover ratio decreased to 0.20% by the end of the first quarter of this year, compared to 1.35% in the same period last year.