KARACHI: The stock market likely to stay green during next week as the country recorded a decline in infection rate of COVID cases.
Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market to continue trading in the green. COVID cases have seen a further decline with infection ratios coming down to below 4 percent this week.
Cyclicals are expected to continue being in the limelight while recent rise in oil prices may continue to attract attention in E&P scrips.
The benchmark KSE-100 index of Pakistan Stock Exchange is currently trading at a PER of 7.6x (2021) compared to Asia Pac regional average of 17.1x and while offering DY of 6.3 percent versus 2.6 percent offered by the region.
The domestic bourse continued its ascent this week, closing at 46,906 points (+520 points WoW), a ~3.5-Yr high. Rally in the equity market has continued with investors celebrating the start of the vaccination drive across the country. Moreover, with the onset of the result season, corporate earnings are showing and are expected to continue showing a strong momentum particularly amongst cyclicals.
This week agreements were also initiated between IPPs and CPPAG attracting bulls once again to the power sector while jump in oil prices (Arab Light is up 4.6 percent WoW) kept E&P scrips in the green as well.
Sector-wise positive contributions came from
i) Oil & Gas Exploration Companies (334 points),
ii) Power Generation & Distribution (101 points), and
iii) Fertiliser (90 points).
Whereas sectors that contributed negatively included: Technology and Communication (94 points), Engineering (59 points) and Commercial Banks (45 points).
Top scrip-wise contributors were MARI (147 points), OGDC (93 points), and HUBC (78 points) while laggards included TRG (130 points), HBL (46 points), and INIL (38 points).
Foreign selling continued this week clocking-in at USD 2.7 million compared to a net sell of USD 9.1 million last week. Selling was witnessed in Cements (USD 2.0 million) and technology and Communication (USD 0.5 million).
On the domestic front, major buying was reported by Individuals (USD 9.5 million and Companies (USD 6.6 million). Average volumes arrived at 554 million shares (down by 18 percent WoW) while average value traded settled at USD 171 million (up by 1.2 percent WoW).
