Activity on the Lebanese stock market weakened during the sixth month of 2025 with the number of shares changing hands decreasing by 79.30% month-on-month to 496,525 shares, compared to 2,398,966 shares in May, with value traded plummeting by 77.41% to $10.86 million, from around $48.07 million a month earlier. Trades mainly consisted of banking stocks (77.21% of total number of shares traded) followed by real estate (22.68%) and industry & trading (0.11%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies rose by 13.91% in June to $23.52 billion, noting that it came in 42.15% higher year-on-year when compared to the $16.54 billion reading reported in June 2024. The monthly increase in the market capitalization owes to the appreciation in the prices of heavy market-capitalization weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” (19.69% monthly increase) and Solidere “B” (24.47% monthly rise) shares outweighing the 8.73% drop in the price of Bank Audi listed shares.

On an annual basis, the number of shares changing hands on the BSE rose by 46.22% in the first half of 2025 to 8.25 million shares while the value of shares traded plummeted by 42.45% to $140.46 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 June 2025 higher at 8.210x compared to 6.715x in May, noting that it stood at 5.680x in June 2024 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $69.05 and $69.00 respectively, compared to closing prices of $100.00 for Solidere “A” shares and $103.00 for “Solidere “B” shares at end of June 2025.

Overall, trading activity grew thinner in June 2025 as evidenced by the drop in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.03%, down from 0.12% a month earlier. Conversely, the turnover ratio increased to 0.42% by the end of the first half of this year, compared to 0.29% in the same period last year.