Market watch: HUBCO bails out bourse to close at record high

Benchmark KSE-100 index gains 186 points.

KARACHI: The local bourse took a sharp pull back, offsetting yesterday’s losses, in an attempt to break the resistance level of 18,000 and closed above it. The market saw an intraday correction where it came into the red zone touching a low of 17,786 points, but managed to crawl back up after investors received a confidence boost due to stellar earnings announcements by the Hub Power Company.

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s (KSE) benchmark 100-share index jumped 1.04% or 186 points to end at 18,080.9 point level. Trade volumes fell to 270 million shares compared with Tuesday’s tally of 313 million shares.

“The market started the day on low volumes as a careful and slow rise in prices kept participant cautious, however, the second half of the day provided much needed impetus after phenomenal earnings announcement by the Hub Power Company,” Nazim Muttalib, analyst at Elixir Securities.

Shares of 396 companies were traded on Wednesday. At the end of the day 187 stocks closed higher, 153 declined while 56 remained unchanged. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs7.28 billion.

The oil sector remained a favourite, supporting the index as the Economic Coordination Committee of the cabinet approved the increase in margins for the oil marketing companies by Rs0.25 per litre on petrol and Rs0.1 per litre on high speed diesel (HSD).

At lower levels activity was seen by local institutions and individual traders in telecom, fertiliser and the banking sector, said Fahad Ali, analyst at JS Global Capital.

Hubco announced its results for the first half of the fiscal 2013 where it posted earnings per share of Rs4.1 coupled with Rs3.5 payout. After the announcement, the power producer’s stock touched its upper circuit to close at Rs53.49.

Lafarge Pakistan was the volume leader with 28.27 million shares gaining Rs0.48 to finish at Rs5.83. It was followed by Telecard with 25.43 million shares losing Rs0.02 to close at Rs7.4 and Pakistan International Airlines with 15.37 million shares climbing Re1 to close at Rs5.32.

According to rumours, foreign institutions were very active and continued their buying spree, added Ali.

Contrarily, foreign institutional investors were buyers of Rs148.6 million and sellers of Rs199.9 million, according to data maintained by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2013.

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