KARACHI: The stock market fell by 182 points on Thursday owing to profit taking and the decision of the apex court regarding payment of Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC).
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed at 40,291 points as against the previous day’s closing of 40,473 points showing a decline of 182 points.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market opened on a positive note on the opening bell with +70 points and 2.8 million shares.
The index tumbled afterwards as Supreme Court announced the decision on GIDC, which required industries to pay Rs. 457 billion on account of GIDC over a period of 2 years. Investors took it as cue to book profits, which brought the index down by 575 points during the session.
E&P, O&GMCs and Tech stocks largely remained unharmed, among which TRG and UNITY hit upper circuits. Fertilizer, Cement and Banking sector stocks remained under pressure throughout the session.
Vanaspati sector led the volumes with 110 million shares, courtesy of UNITY (including the trading volume of its Right Shares).
This was followed by Technology (81.1 million) and O&GMCs (72.8 million). Among scrips, UNITY led the volumes with 60.1 million, followed by HASCOL (50.6 million) and UNITYR2 (50.6 million).
Sectors contributing to the performance include Fertilizer (-201 points), Inv Banks (-27 points), Banks (-19 points), Textile (-19 points), Technology (+31 points), O&GMcs (+29 points), Power (+22 points) and E&P (+18 points).
Volumes declined from 591.3 million shares as against 556.1 million shares (-6 percent DoD). Average traded value also declined by 14 percent to reach US$ 115.2 million as against US$ 133.7 million.
Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include UNITY, HASCOL, UNITYR2, WTL and TRG, which formed 41 percent of total volumes.
Stocks that contributed positively to the index include TRG (+37 points), HUBC (+22 points), BAHL (+20 points), SNGP (+15 points) and HASCOL (+13 points). Stocks that contributed negatively include FFC (-114 points), ENGRO (-44 points), MCB (-27 points), EFERT (-26 points) and DAWH (-24 points).
