WEEKLY SHARE UPDATE - Shareholders of Hydropower Firms Gain

The shareholders of hydropower, insurance companies and hotels sub-groups gained this week as these sub-groups’ indices gained 27.02 points to 888.41 points, 4.42 points to 648.77 points and 2.90 points to 369.35 points.

However, the shareholders of oth- ers, development banks, finance companies and commercial banks sub-groups lost this week. The fall in these key market sub-groups pulled the Nepse down by 13.49 points to 684.39 points from the last week’s closing of 698.88 points.

The others sub-group plunged by a whopping 69.48 points to 646.19 points. Similarly, development banks, finance companies and commercial banks lost 28.56 points to 740.69 points, 24.53 points to 736.72 points and 10.99 points to 706.12 points.

The two sub-groups — manufac- turing and trading — did not see any changes in their indices as their shares were not transacted the whole week.

Despite the fall in Nepse this week, the transaction amount has, however, increased by 176 per cent to 953.93 million against the last week’s decrease of 5.56 per cent to Rs 345.18 million. The 78-scrip sensitive index — considered the blue chip shares in the domestic market — also lost 2.68 points to 183.96 points. The float index — calculated on the basis of real transactions — shed 0.99 point to close at 66.25 points

Similarly, the contribution of Group-A companies — the bluechip shares — also plunged to 14.38 per cent against last week’s 49.01 per cent.

The top performers of this week are Nepal SBI Bank (with Rs 670.37 million), Nepal Sharemarkets and Finance (with Rs 166.76 million), Standard Chartered Bank Nepal (with Rs 17.71 million), Bank of Kathmandu (with Rs 15.32 million) and Chilime Hydropower Company (with Rs 14.27 million) Nepal SBI Bank also topped the chart in terms of trading amount and share units as its 4,45,000-unit of shares changed hands for Rs 670.37 million, whereas Global Bank topped the chart in terms of number of transactions with 264 transactions. The sole secondary market this week also witnessed the first transactions of Bank of Asia Nepal and Citizens’ Bank International that were listed last week.

The secondary market index, Nepse, is poised to plunge for another couple of weeks as the old investors are seeking exit from the market and the new investors are entering. The number of investors is estimated at around 1.2 million at present.

In the first nine-months of the current fiscal year, 15 new companies were listed — making the total listed companies to 157 — in the sole secondary market.