Activity on the Beirut Stock Exchange improved during the sixth month of 2026 with the number of shares changing hands increasing to 348,367 shares from 228,555 shares a month earlier and value traded soaring by 235.31% to $18.28 million from around $5.45 million in May. Trades mainly consisted of real estate sector stocks (67.60% of total number of shares traded) followed by banking (30.07%) and industry & trading (2.33%) stocks. The market capitalization of listed companies rose by 3.12% in June to $18.48 billion, noting that it came in 21.43% lower year-on-year when benchmarked to the $23.52 billion reading recorded at end of June 2025. The monthly increase in the market capitalization is attributed to the appreciation in the prices of heavy market-capitalization weighted stocks namely Solidere “A” (5.80% monthly rise), Solidere “B” (2.75% monthly increase), BLOM Bank listed shares (2.27% monthly rise), and Ciments Libanais (17.10% monthly increase), which altogether outweighed the contraction in the price of Bank Audi listed shares (15.03% monthly decrease).

On an annual basis, the number of shares traded on the BSE rose exponentially to 14.01 million shares in the first half of 2026 from around 8.25 million shares in the same period in 2025 with traded value soaring by 23.87% to $173.99 million from just above $140.45 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 2026 higher at 5.981x compared to 5.649x in May, noting that it stood at 8.268x at end of June 2025 at a time when the prices of heavy market-cap weighted Solidere “A” and “B” shares were trading at $100.00 and $103.00 respectively compared to closing prices of $74.75 for Solidere “A” shares and $72.95 for “Solidere “B” shares at end of June 2026.

Overall, trading activity grew stronger in June 2026 as evidenced by the rise in the turnover ratio (being the number of shares traded divided by total listed shares) to 0.02%, up from 0.01% a month before. Similarly, the turnover ratio increased to 0.71% as at the end of the first half of 2026, compared to 0.42% in the same period in 2025.