Market watch: Amid HBL book building, index ends week on a high

Benchmark 100-share index gains 337.02 points.

KARACHI: The index ended the week on a high, continuing its recovery as sentiments remained strong over foreign interest in Habib Bank’s (HBL PA +1.47%) sell-off by the government — the biggest secondary public offering transaction in the country’s capital market history.

The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE)-100 index closed at 32,350.93 on Thursday, registering an increase of 1.05% or 337.02 points.

“As soon as the colour started to show signs of oversubscription, local institutional interest paced up sky rocketing other financials with MCB Bank (MCB PA +3.41%) hitting upper price limit intra-day while United Bank Limited (UBL PA +2.54%) and Allied Bank Limited (ABL PA +2.55%) closed in the green,” said Harris Ahmed Batla of Elixir Securities.



“Wider market sentiment also gained strength over $1 billion foreign inflow pushing cements and IPPs to new highs as probability of another discount rate cut remains on the cards.

“We expect the market to gain in the coming days as the quarterly result season kicks off however, investors will closely track flows while we maintain our liking for UBL, BAFL, PPL, DGKC, ENGRO, LUCK, HASCOL, FATIMA, PTC, FABL and HUBC,” he concluded.

Trade volumes rose to 253 million shares compared to 200 million on Thursday.

Shares of 370 companies were traded on the last trading session of the week. Of these, 117 companies declined, 232 closed higher and 21 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs15 billion.



Fauji Cement was the volume leader with 28.3 million shares, gaining Rs0.93 to close at Rs32.54. It was followed by Pak Elektron with 25.8 million shares, gaining Rs2.63 to close at Rs57.94 and Jahangir Siddiqui and Company with 22.1 million shares, gaining Rs0.64 to close at Rs22.39.

Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of Rs1 billion worth of shares during the session, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th, 2015.

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