Nepal Telecom pulls share market down

KATHMANDU, MAR 25: 

Nepal Telecom (NT)’s dividend distribution has pulled the Nepse index down by 7.09 points, this week - March 18 to 23.

NT, which has the highest weightage among all the listed companies, lost Rs 43 per unit stock in the week’s trading pulling others subgroup by an overwhelming 50.51 points.

The stock prices of NT, which will distribute 45 per cent cash dividend, has been adjusted prior to its annual general meeting that will be held on April 4. The Nepse index has fallen victim to the self-adjustment mechanism of dividend payout scaring investors.

The market opened at 310.79 points which plunged to 303.20 points by the end of the day. The benchmark index kept sliding since then till it reached 301.61 points on Tuesday. By the end of the week, it went a little up to 303.70 points. 

The trade in shares of class ‘A’ companies contributed 68.45 per cent of the total transactions with the trading of blue chip stocks worth Rs 55.4 million. 

Trading volume this week declined by 60.19 per cent as compared to that of last week as the trading floor of the stock exchange observed 4980 transactions of 377,090 unit shares worth Rs 81.02 million belonging to 119 companies throughout the week in four trading days.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of class ‘A’ companies went down by 1.7 points reaching 75.19 points at the end of the week. The float index, the indicator of the performance of actual shares traded, also declined by 0.02 points to 24.58 points.

Manufacturing subgroup, hotels, development banks and commercial banks gained 10.38 points, 5.42 points, 1.29 points and 0.79 points, respectively while the rest of the subgroups ended up in the red. 

Hydropower went down by 8.01 points followed by insurance that lost 6.06 points. Trading subgroup and finance companies declined by 1.71 points and 0.62 points, respectively.

Sanima Bank was the forerunner in terms of transaction amount and number of shares traded with a trading of 82,894 unit shares worth Rs 10.5 million. Valley Finance topped the chart in the number of transactions with 889 transactions.

The top five performers of the week were Sanima Bank (Rs 10.56 million), Everest Bank (Rs 6.97 million), Chilime Hydropower Company (Rs 5.19 million), Bank of Kathmandu (Rs 4.25 million) and Bishal Bazaar Company (Rs 4.11 million).

Source: THT