Hydropower companies put brake to rally

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE


KATHMANDU: The losses in share prices of listed hydropower companies stalled secondary market’s rally this week.

The stock market that had witnessed minimal surge last week again went down by 1.61 points in the week’s trading as the hydropower subgroup lost 93.89 points.

The market had just started to look up when the hydropower companies put an end to the recovery. Butwal Power Company alone lost Rs 194 in a unit share this week.

The announcement of Chilime Hydropower’s public offering from next week contributed to the decline in the company’s share prices. A unit share of Chilime is priced at around Rs 900 in the secondary market while it will be available at Rs 408.36, after adding premium. The market reacted to the public offering by pulling the price of Chilime’s share.

Sunday morning the market opened at 346.44 points and it closed at 349.22 points. The next day also Nepse inched a little up to 350.62 points, but on Wednesday it retreated to 346.91 points. By the end of the trading week, the secondary market index turned back to 344.83 points. This week, the trading floor observed 358,827 unit shares of 117 companies worth Rs 76.76 million being traded through 6,160 transactions in the four trading days. This is 18.91 per cent decline in the transaction volume in comparison to a week ago.

The sensitive index — measuring the performance of Class ‘A’ companies — increased by 0.1 point reaching 85.46 points on the week’s trading. Among the total transactions, the trading of class ‘A’ companies consisted of 60.83 per cent amounting to Rs 46.6 million. The float index went down by 0.03 point to 29.13 points.

Commercial banks earned 3.37 points as the major banks were able to gain in the week’s trading. Similarly, Bishal Bazaar earned Rs 57 per unit share pushing trading subgroup up by 5.71 points, while finance companies went up by 0.46 point.

Soaltee Hotel pulled hotel subgroup down by 10.18 points. Nepal Telecom pulled the others subgroup by 4.7 points and Unilever’s loss of Rs 110 on a unit share also brought the manufacturing subgroup down by 10.18 points. Development banks and insurance subgroup lost 1.61 points and 1.86 points, respectively.

People’s Finance (Rs 8.82 million), Standard Chartered Bank (Rs 6.25 million), Bank of Kathmandu (Rs 6.04 million) Chilime Hydropower (Rs 5.47 million) and Progressive Finance (Rs 2.95 million) were the top five performers of the week.