Activity on the Lebanese stock market rebounded during the third month of 2025 with the number of shares changing hands increasing by 102.95% month-on-month to 1,626,857 shares, compared to 801,588 shares in February, while value traded dropped by 25.70% to $16.68 million, from around $22.45 million a month earlier. Trades mainly consisted of banking stocks (92.60% of total number of shares traded) followed by real estate (7.36%) and industry & trading (0.04%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies fell by 3.74% in March to $23.53 billion, noting that it came in 32.06% higher year-on-year when compared to the $17.82 billion reading reported in March 2024. The monthly decrease in the market capitalization owes to the contraction in the prices of heavy market-capitalization weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” (7.26% monthly decrease) and Solidere “B” (4.37% monthly drop) shares, which altogether outweighed the appreciation in the prices of BLOM Bank listed shares (6.06% monthly increase) and Bank Audi listed shares (8.70% month-on-month hike).

On an annual basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE fell by 11.91% in the first quarter of 2025 to 3.46 million shares with the value of shares traded plummeting by 61.77% to $69.66 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 2025 lower at 7.836x compared to 8.379x in February, noting that it stood at 5.656x in March 2024 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $73.15 and $74.20 respectively, compared to closing prices of $95.80 for Solidere “A” shares and $99.55 for “Solidere “B” shares as at end of March 2025.

Overall, trading activity grew stronger in March 2025 as evidenced by the rise in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.08%, up from 0.04% a month earlier. Conversely, the turnover ratio decreased to 0.18% by the end of the first quarter of this year, compared to 0.20% in the same quarter last year.