Activity on the Lebanese stock market extended its upturn during the fifth month of 2025 with the number of shares changing hands increasing by 27.00% month-on-month to 2,398,966 shares, compared to 1,888,985 shares in April, with value traded skyrocketing by 304.75% to $48.07 million, from around $11.88 million a month earlier. Trades mainly consisted of banking stocks (78.35% of total number of shares traded) followed by real estate (20.99%) and industry & trading (0.66%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies fell by 2.40% in May to $20.64 billion, noting that it came in 20.55% higher year-on-year when compared to the $17.13 billion reading reported in May 2024. The monthly decrease in the market capitalization owes to the contraction in the prices of heavy market-capitalization weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” (4.19% monthly decrease), and Solidere “B” (4.99% monthly drop) shares.

On an annual basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE rose by 50.12% in the first five months of 2025 to 7.75 million shares while the value of shares traded plummeted by 42.59% to $129.60 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 May 2025 lower at 6.707x compared to 7.040x in April, noting that it stood at 5.635x in May 2024 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $70.05 and $69.70 respectively, compared to closing prices of $83.55 for Solidere “A” shares and $82.75 for “Solidere “B” shares at end of May 2025.

Overall, trading activity grew stronger in May 2025 as evidenced by the rise in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.12%, up from 0.10% a month earlier. Similarly, the turnover ratio increased to 0.40% by the end of the first five months of this year, compared to 0.26% in the same period last year.