Investor confidence pushes Nepse up

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: The Nepse index broke through the 400-point barrier as investors continued to show their confidence in the hydropower and telecom shares, this week –– July 22 to 26.

The index earned 6.08 points as share prices of hydropower companies and Nepal Telecom continued to maintain its good performance. The market that opened at 395.47 points on Sunday afternoon closed at 404.75 points by the end of the day. The index climbed to 408.36 points the next day. But from Tuesday it started to gradually backtrack reaching 401.55 points at the end of the week.

The hydropower subgroup continued to lead other subgroups by earning 20.12 points as heavyweight Chilime Hydropower Company earned Rs 86 per unit share even though stocks of Butwal Power Company and Arun Valley Hydropower did not see their prices go up by much.

Likewise, Nepal Telecom –– that has the highest weightage among listed companies –– saw its stock price rise by Rs 15 per unit pushing others subgroup up by 17.62 points. All

the remaining subgroups also recorded gains in the week’s transaction except for manufacturing and finance companies that

ended up in the red by losing 4.41 points and 1.25 points, respectively.

This week, commercial banks and development banks earned 5.4 points and 2.07 points, respectively, while trading and insurance companies gained a meagre 0.18 points and 0.42 points, respectively.

The stock exchange witnessed trading worth Rs 467 million of more than 1.4 million unit shares belonging to 116 companies in 7505 transactions which is a 24.54 per cent increment in comparison to last week. The volume of blue chip stocks belonging to class ‘A’ companies consisted of 75.15 per cent of the

total transaction worth

Rs 346.2 million.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chip stocks went up by 1.83 points. Likewise, the indicator of the performance of actual shares traded –– float index –– also went up by 0.27 points to 31.23 points.

This week, Everest Bank was the forerunner in terms of trading volume with trading of shares worth Rs 92 million. Kist Bank’s shares were traded the most with 327,615 unit shares traded. Janata Bank Nepal was the forerunner in terms of highest number of transactions with 899 transactions.

The top five performers of the week were Everest Bank (Rs 92 million), Chilime Hydropower (Rs 55.24 million), Bank of Kathmandu (Rs 38.34 million), Kist Bank (Rs 37.36 million) and Nabil Bank (Rs 22.77 million).