Market Watch: Telecom bulls take bourse to a new 52-week high

Benchmark KSE-100 index climbs 138 points.

KARACHI: Heavy buying in the telecom sector, despite the Competition Commission of Pakistan calling the formation of international telecom gateway plan anti-competitive, pushed the market to a new 52-week high.

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index jumped 0.9% or 137.87 points to end at 15,391.58 point level.

“Developments in the international clearing house’s (ICH) case kept bullish sentiments alive in the telecom sector with top three volume leaders being telcos, said Samar Iqbal, equity dealer at Topline Securities.

The proposed ICH gateway will converge all international calls to a single technical gateway led by PTCL against the current practice of being handled by 14 long distance international operators. On Thursday, the Ministry of Information Technology issued a policy directive against the formation of ICH.

Furthermore, slowdown in inflation for August enticed investors to take positions in dividend yielding stocks and leveraged companies amid hopes for cut in policy rates in the next monetary policy, added Iqbal.

WorldCall Telecom was the volume leader with 30.6 million shares gaining Rs0.4 to close at Rs3.29. It was followed by Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) – staying in the spotlight for the whole week – with 18.4 million shares gaining Re1 (upper limit) to finish at Rs18.04 and Telecard Limited with 17.2 shares gaining Rs0.16 to close at Rs2.91.

Market also maintained its bullish momentum over expectations of healthy upcoming results of the index heavyweight oil and gas sector, said Escorts Capital Chief Operating Officer Hasnain Asghar Ali.

Earlier, the government cleared Rs80 billion worth of term finance certificates on behalf of the Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDCL). Hence, OGDCL provided the final boost for the index to close at its new 52-week high.

Trade volumes surged insignificantly to 240 million shares compared with Thursday’s tally of 220 million shares.

Shares of 334 companies were traded on the last trading session of the week. At the end of the day 173 stocks closed higher, 121 declined while 40 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs 7.8 billion.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of Rs612.9 million, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2012.