Activity on the Lebanese stock market fell markedly during the first month of 2026 despite two block trades involving some 10.16 million shares of Holcim Liban. In details, the number of shares changing hands decreased to 11,554,789 shares in January 2026 compared to 18,721,012 shares in December 2025 while value traded rose by 31.21% to $98.20 million from around $74.84 million. Trades mainly consisted of industry & trading stocks (90.47% of total number of shares traded) followed by real estate (5.29%) and banking (4.24%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies fell by 12.32% in January to $17.67 billion, noting that it came in 30.99% lower year-on-year when compared to the $25.60 billion reading recorded at end of January 2025. The monthly drop in the market capitalization is attributed to the contraction in the prices of heavy market-capitalization weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” (16.49% monthly decrease), Solidere “B” (16.26% monthly drop) and Holcim Liban (1.39% monthly decline) shares, which altogether outweighed the increase in the prices of BLOM Bank listed shares (12.00% monthly rise).

On an annual basis, the number of shares traded on the BSE rose exponentially to 11.56 million shares in January 2026 from just above 1.03 million shares in the same month last year with traded value soaring by 221.64% to $98.20 million from $30.53 million as a result of the sale of Holcibel S.A. of its 52.07% stake in Holcim Liban to B.Z.L. Cement Holding S.A.L. and North Pine S.A.L. (Holding). 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 January 2026 lower at 5.673x compared to 6.794x in December, noting that it stood at 9.243x in January 2025 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $113.30 and $110.70 respectively, compared to closing prices of $70.15 for Solidere “A” shares and $69.25 for “Solidere “B” shares at end of January 2026.

Overall, trading activity grew thinner in January 2026 as evidenced by the drop in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.59%, down from 0.96% a month earlier.