Stock market investors concerned about sudden fuel price hike

By Hiran H.Senewiratne

Trading activities at the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) yesterday showed a positive trend in the beginning due to the newest entrant to the stock market hSenid’s shares started with a 100 percent premium, however, profit takings led to a severe drop in the market by 200 negative points in mid session. Nevertheless, the latter part of the day showed some recovery in trading, stock market analysts said. The stock market investors were concerned about the sudden fuel price hike as it was an indication that the government has decided to implement rigorous reforms as if it were involved in an IMF programme, analysts said.

However, the last season of trading showed firm recovery, they said.Sri Lankan multinational software solutions provider, hSenid’s IPO opened on December 3 and was oversubscribed in a matter of hours, receiving over Rs. 9.3 billion worth of applications from 10,602 applicants, for a total subscription of 745,014,900 shares.This makes hSenid’s IPO one of the most oversubscribed issues in recent times, having drawn active interest from a diverse spectrum of both local and foreign investors including institutions and high-net-worth individuals. Amid those developments  both indices moved downwards. All Share Price Index down by 9.19 points and S and P SL20 down by 5.13 points. Turnover stood at Rs 4.02 billion with a single crossing. The crossing was reported in Melstacope, which crossed 500,000 shares to the tune of Rs 27 million and its share price traded at Rs 54.

In the retail market to seven companies that mainly contributed to the turnover were Expolanka Rs 569 million (1.5 million shares traded), hSendid Rs 549 million (24.5 million shares traded), Lanka IOC Rs 437 million (8.8 million shares traded), Browns Investments Rs 302 million (21.8 million shares traded), Hayleys Rs 281.9 million (2.2 million shares traded), Royal Ceramic Rs 187.2 million (2.6 million shares traded) and LOLC Holdings Rs 128.5 million (117,000 shares traded). During the day 81.5 million share volume changed hands in 43541 transactions.