PSX witnesses uptick

KARACHI: Pakistan Stock Exchange Wednesday witnessed a mixed trend and closed on slight positive note.

The benchmark KSE-100 Index, after oscillating between 45,438.04 points intra-day high and 45,241.33 points, closed at 45,407.89 points, up 17.05 points or 0.04 percent.

Trading activity further improved as daily volumes on ready counter increased to 432.060 million shares as compared to 375.985 million shares traded Tuesday.

BRIndex100 inched up by 2.2 points or 0.05 percent to close at 4,682.51 points with total daily turnover of 329.622 million shares.

BRIndex30 gained 28.42 points or 0.14 percent to close at 20,185.45 points with total daily trading volumes of 267.794 million shares.

Foreign investors also remained net buyers of shares worth $5.740 million. Total market capitalization stood at previous day’s closing level of Rs 7.788 trillion. Out of total 363 active scrips, 174 closed in positive and 167 in negative while the value of 22 stocks remained unchanged.

WorldCall Telecom was the volume leader with 75.590 million shares and gained Rs 0.19 to close at Rs 2.36 followed by Unity Foods R3 that closed at Rs 2.27, up Rs 0.79 with 66.808 million shares.

Sapphire Fiber and Bata Pak were the top gainers increasing by Rs 72.45 and Rs 51.00 respectively to close at Rs 1070.00 and Rs 2090.00 while Nestle Pakistan and Blessed Textile were the top losers declining by Rs 213.44 and Rs 36.98 respectively to close at Rs 5512.05 and Rs 463.01.

An analyst at Arif Habib Limited said that the market played in the range-bound area as investors remained risk-averse due to the rising number of Covid-19’s new variant Omicron cases in Pakistan.

Profit-taking was witnessed in the first trading hour while market battled between the bulls and bears throughout the day. Activity continued to remain side-ways as market witnessed hefty volumes in the 3rd tier stocks.

Sectors contributing to the performance include E&P (up 25 points), Power (up 24 points), Investment Banks/Sec. (up 20 points), Fertilizer (up 13 points) and Tobacco (up 13 points).

BR Automobile Assembler Index gained 24.39 points or 0.28 percent to close at 8,658.52 points with total turnover of 3.102 million shares.

BR Cement Index declined by 81.85 points or 1.36 percent to close at 5,928.51 points with 8.949 million shares.

BR Commercial Banks Index lost 6.77 points or 0.07 percent to close at 9,811.00 points with 7.495 million shares.

BR Power Generation and Distribution Index increased by 59.45 points or 1.06 percent to close at 5,683.69 points with 7.367 million shares.

BR Oil and Gas Index inched up by 13.56 points or 0.35 percent to close at 3,862.72 points with 15.370 million shares.

BR Tech. & Comm. Index closed at 4,374.48 points, up 13.24 points or 0.3 percent with 143.780 million shares.

Neelam Naz at JS Global Capital said that the benchmark KSE-100 Index managed to close in green at the 45,408 level, gaining 17 points. Major volume leaders were WTL (up 8.8 percent), UNITYR3 (up 53.4 percent), TELE (up 3.8 percent), FNEL (up 2.1 percent) and TRG (up 0.2 percent).

TELE announced material information regarding its wholly owned subsidiary, Supernet, getting a major optical fibre supply project from a Pakistani Mobile Network provider, which kept the share in limelight today.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021