Activity on the Lebanese stock market fell markedly during the second month of 2026 as the previous month saw two block trades that involved some 10.16 million shares of Holcim Liban. In details, the number of shares changing hands decreased to 872,907 shares in February 2026 compared to 11,554,789 shares a month earlier with value traded concurrently dropping by 72.38% to $27.12 million from around $98.20 million in January. Trades mainly consisted of banking sector stocks (59.18% of total number of shares traded) followed by real estate (37.23%) and industry & trading (3.58%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies rose by 7.23% in February to $18.95 billion, noting that it came in 22.51% lower year-on-year when compared to the $24.45 billion reading recorded at end of February 2025. The monthly rise in the market capitalization is attributed to the appreciation in the prices of heavy market-capitalization weighted stocks, namely Solidere “A” (8.05% monthly increase), Solidere “B” (8.30% monthly rise), BLOM Bank listed shares (6.57% monthly increase), and Bank Audi listed shares (31.15% monthly rise).

On an annual basis, the number of shares traded on the BSE rose exponentially to 12.43 million shares YTD February 2026 from around 1.84 million shares in the same period last year with traded value soaring by 136.54% to $125.32 million from $52.98 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 February 2026 higher at 6.070x compared to 5.673x in January, noting that it stood at 8.429x in February 2025 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $103.30 and $104.10 respectively, compared to closing prices of $75.80 for Solidere “A” shares and $75.00 for “Solidere “B” shares at end of February 2026.

Overall, trading activity grew thinner in February 2026 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 0.59% a month earlier. Conversely, the turnover ratio increased to 0.63% by the end of the first two months of this year, compared to 0.09% in the same period last year.