Friday 26 / April / 2024
Muscat: Muscat Stock Exchange's benchmark index in the weekly trading index closed lower by 16 points at 4,871 points. The financial sector index lost 80 points, the industrial sector index fell by more than 55 points and the Sharia index recorded a decline of 4 points.
Local institutional investors were seen buying in last week's trading, while individual investors were seen selling sell to take advantage of the gains they had achieved in the IPO of Abraj Energy Services Company, which concluded at the beginning of this month, and 35 per cent of the shares offered for subscription were allocated. public to individual investors.
Last week, the purchases of local institutional investors accounted for 61.8 per cent of the total trading value witnessed by the Muscat Stock Exchange (MSX), compared to sales of 51.6 per cent of the total trading value, while the sales of Omani individual investors amounted to 34.5 per cent of the total trading value, compared to purchases of 16 per cent of the trading.
Last week, the share of Abraj Energy witnessed several selling pressures after its rise in the previous week to the level of 300 baisas per share, recording good gains for individual investors who subscribed for 224 baisas per share. These gains encouraged individual investors to sell, which put pressure on the shares and led to a fall at the end of the weekly trading to 293 baisas, recording a weekly decline of 5 baisas. Last week's trading ranged between 299 baisas and 292 baisas, and the last deals were executed for 293 baisas. The market value of the company at the end of last week amounted to OMR225.60 million, recording weekly losses of OMR3.9 million.
Last week's trading came amid other pressures on the shares of banks and leading companies that held annual ordinary general assemblies meetings during the week, during which dividends recommended by their boards of directors were approved. This pushed its shares to decline, leading the main index and the sectoral indices to decline, except for the service sector index, which rose 11 points, with the support of the shares of Omantel, Al Maha for Marketing Petroleum Products, energy companies, and several other companies included in the sector index sample.
Last week witnessed the annual ordinary general assemblies of 15 public joint-stock companies approving the dividends recommended by their boards of directors. The most prominent of these companies are Bank Muscat, Bank Dhofar, National Bank of Oman, Salalah Mills, Oman Cement, Al Maha Oil Products Marketing, Salalah Port Services and Oman Beverages.
The value of trading last week amounted to OMR15.4 million, down by 61 per cent from the previous week, which witnessed transactions of more than OMR40 million in the first week of listing Abraaj Energy Services Company. The number of transactions executed last week decreased to 4,549 compared to 17,337 transactions that were executed. in the preceding week.
The share of Oman International Development and Investment (Ominvest) ranked second among the most heavily traded companies in terms of trading value, after the share of Abraaj Company, which accounted for 33.2 per cent of the total trading value. Bank Muscat came next with transactions amounting to OMR1.89 million, Omantel at OMR1.2 million, and Sohar International Bank with transactions amounting to 688,000, representing 4.4 per cent of the total trading value.
Last week, the prices of 34 securities declined, compared to 20 securities whose prices rose, and 19 securities remained unchanged at their previous levels. The shares of Al-Madina Investment Holding, Al-Batinah for Development and Investment, Al-Hassan Engineering and Al-Maha for Marketing Petroleum Products and the Building Materials Industry were at the forefront of the stocks that rose the most in terms of the rate of rise, while it topped Shares of Dhofar Power Generation, Oman National Engineering and Investment, Al Fajr International, Al-Safa Foods and Al-Sawadi Energy list of losing stocks.
The declines in stocks led to a fall in the market capitalisation of the Muscat Stock Exchange at the end of last week at OMR23.83 billion, recording weekly losses of OMR100.30 million.
