This is evidenced by the report of the National Financial Market Commission for 2024. The upward trend is observed only in terms of corporate and municipal bond issues.
A comparative analysis of the respective figures for 2023 and 2024 emphasizes a downward trend in both segments of the capital market – with a more pronounced decline in the primary segment and a slight decrease in the secondary market. However, the NCFM believes that the increasing issuance of debt securities is an encouraging signal of the growth potential of the local capital market.
“Despite the decline in total resources mobilized through the primary capital market (capital increase and borrowings), this segment of the market in the period from January to December 2024 for the first time showed impressive progress, maintaining an upward trend, in terms of bond issuances (corporate and municipal),” the regulator notes.
Thus, out of 92 securities issues with a total volume of 674.71 million lei registered during this period, the largest share in terms of value came from bond issues (569.9 million lei), which represents an increase of more than 2.2 times compared to 2023.
As for the volume of equity issues, there is a significant decrease, from 5194.07 million lei in 2023 to only 104.8 million lei in 2024. This sharp decrease is largely due to the exceptional level of issuances in 2023, affected by the state intervention through substantial contributions to the share capital of Energocom JSC (5050.0 million lei, representing 97.2% of the total issuances in that year), in the context of the energy crisis.
If we exclude this single factor and recalculate the volume of issuances for 2023 without the contribution to Energocom SA, it would amount to only 144.07 million lei. Comparing the volume of share issues in 2024 (104.8 million lei) with this adjusted value, we obtain an actual decrease of about 27.2%.
The dynamics of the secondary capital market segment in the compared years shows a slight decrease in the volume of transactions and a twofold decrease in the number of transactions. The total volume of transactions performed outside the regulated market and MTFs in 2024 decreased in comparison with the previous year by approximately 544 million lei, including a 2.3-fold decrease in the number of transactions.
Although the MTF sector of the stock market continues to decline, the overall performance of the stock market in 2024 recorded the highest values in the last three years. This was due to one-off transactions recorded in the regulated market, which accounted for 89.73%. Namely – purchase of own shares of CB “Moldova-Agroindbank” in the amount of 231,39 million lei. As well as two special transactions: with shares issued by CB “Banca Comercială Română Chișinău” in the amount of 224.01 million lei and with shares issued by CB “Banca de Finanțe si Comerț” in the amount of 9.37 million lei.
Thus, the total value of transactions carried out on the stock market (291 transactions) amounted to 526.26 million lei, which means an increase of about 16 times compared to 2023, when a total of 156 transactions worth 32.01 million lei were concluded.
