Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, May 15:

Following last week’s fall, stock trading at the country’s sole secondary market — Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) this week registered a marginal growth. The growth is attributed to trading in Bottlers Nepal Ltd under the manufacturing sector that propelled Nepse index up by 2.92 points. According to information provided by Nepal Stock Exchange Ltd (NSEL), the index of the stock market went up to 204.41 points on Friday, from the opening 201.49 points on Monday. The market had lost 3.82 points last week, following a gain of 0.84 points a week before that. Despite major scrip’s failure to do well at the stock market, trading of Bottlers Nepal’s 1,913,296 shares valued at Rs 1,025,500,126 was enough to push up the weekly Nepse index and the total market capitalisation. With permission from NSEL, Bottlers Nepal’s trading was done off the floor in a single transaction.

According to group-wise analysis, the manufacturing group continue to suffer losses, while the commercial bank and the insurance group gained marginally in their respective indices.

The commercial bank group, the largest scrip in the secondary market gained by a marginal 1.43 points, against last week’s growth of 0.42 points. The Nepse index of the group went up to 205.27 points from the opening 203.84 points on Monday. Likewise, the insurance group’s index went up to close at 244.42 points on Friday from the opening 244.14 points on Monday.

However, the hotel, the finance and the manufacturing groups failed to gain this week. The Nepse index of the hotel group closed at 180.86 points from the opening 182.20 points on Monday. The Nepse index of the finance group settled at 194.09 points on the closing day. Earlier the group had opened at 194.70 points on Monday. Despite the huge trading by the Bottlers Nepal, the manufacturing group continued to suffer heavy losses in its index. The group’s index went down by 8.23 points to close at 247.69 points from 255.92 points on Monday.

The trading group, the other group and the development bank group, however, remained constant throughout the week at 95.01 points, 143.94 points and 188.77 points respectively.

With a rise in Nepse index, the total market capitalisation and the number of traded share units as well as transactions also increased substantially this week. A total of 2,407,196 share units valued at Rs 1,18,70,81,661 were traded through 2,148 transactions, against last week’s trading of 108,804 share units through 912 transactions at Rs 13,400,186.

Meanwhile, out of the listed 63 companies for a five-day trading, 49 companies saw transactions during the week. Unlike previous weeks, manufacturing dominated the Nepse floor as it captured the largest chunk of the total share trading. It captured 86.38 per cent of the total trading followed by the commercial bank group with 13.39 per cent. While, the finance group was in third position with 0.18 per cent market share, whereas the insurance group cornered 0.02 per cent. The hotel group, the other group and the development bank group each contributed a mere 0.01 per cent of the total trading.

Janaki Finance Company topped the weekly trading in terms of number of share transactions with 360 transactions. Bottlers Nepal Ltd secured the first position for number of share units and monetary value, while Nepal Bangladesh Bank Ltd was placed in the second place with a transaction value of Rs 14,50,11,045. The Nepse floor remained open all five working days. Shares of Standard Chartered Bank, Himalayan Bank Ltd, Everest Bank Ltd and Standard Finance Ltd were traded throughout the week.