HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE
KATHMANDU: The overly crowded capital market got an additional 5.2 million unit shares listed as the benchmark index remained stationary this week – February 12 to 16.
There were 1.6 million units of rights shares of Unique Finance and Kaski Finance listed at Nepse, this week. Besides that, a total of 3.2 million units of bonus shares of Gauri Shanker Development Bank, National Life Insurance Company and Soaltee Hotel were also listed. The stock market already has more than 1.5 billion units of securities
listed. The excessive supply of stocks in comparison to the demand is the reason for stock prices dipping
at present.
The market was not able to push itself up throughout the week as the benchmark index kept bobbing around 312 points and at the end
of the week, the Nepse
index went up by a marginal 0.03 points.
On Sunday morning, the stock market opened at 312.10 points and decreased to 311.88 points by the end of the day. The benchmark index reached 312.13 points, at the end of the week.
A total of 465,803 unit shares worth Rs 99.4 million belonging to 112 companies were traded in 5954 transactions at the stock exchange throughout the week. Trading volume this week declined by 6.41 per cent as compared to that of last week when the stock exchange witnessed trading worth Rs 106.2 million.
Trading of blue chip stocks amounted to
Rs 59.4 million and Class ‘A’ companies contributed 59.74 per cent of the total transactions.
The sensitive index that measures the performance of Class ‘A’ companies went up by 0.14 points reaching 77.62 points at the end of the week.
The float index, the indicator of the performance of actual shares traded, went down by a meagre 0.03 points to 24.64 points.
The manufacturing sector took a beating as the strike at Unilever pulled its stock price down by Rs 290 per unit share, making the subgroup lose 15.04 points.
Commercial banks, development banks and finance companies also went down by 0.16 points, 3.1 points and 1.81 points, respectively. Insurance companies and hotels also went down by 2.4 points and 4.07 points, respectively.
Nepal Telecom’s share price, however, shot up by Rs 9 making the others subgroup gain 7.4 points. Likewise, the gain in share prices of hydropower companies pulled the hydropower subgroup up by 2.21 points.
Bank of Kathmandu was the forerunner in terms of transaction amount with transactions worth Rs 13.6 million. Kist Bank topped the charts in the number of shares traded with a trading of 67,500 shares. Himalayan Finance outdid others in the number of transactions with 517 transactions.
The top five performers of the week were Bank of Kathmandu (Rs 13.61 million), Standard Chartered Bank (Rs 11.76 million), Everest Bank (Rs 8.11 million), Kist Bank (Rs 7.29 million) and Chilime Hydropower Company (Rs 7.07 million).