Bourse turns bullish, KSE-100 index gains over 200 points

• Stocks gain over 200 points to close the session at 46,625.12 points on Thursday.
• Trading volume drops to 396.4 million shares compared to 477.9 million shares traded on Wednesday (September 8).
• Shares of 525 listed companies were traded. At the end of the session, 252 stocks closed in the green, 245 in the red.

KARACHI: Stocks came in for active follow-up support on selected counters on Thursday but profit-selling at regular intervals allowed them to close with clipped gains.

The benchmark KSE-100 index saw investors and traders engaged in buying. Some brokers said that investors were giving more priority to the cement and technology sectors.

A report from Arif Habib Limited noted that the market moved up today after the downward adjustment witnessed yesterday in the outcome of the MSCI reclassification of Pakistan from Emerging market to Frontier market.

On the corporate fund, Ghani Global Holding announced its financial results for the year ended June 30, 2021, with earnings per share of Rs2.34 along with a bonus issue of 15%. Meanwhile, Ghani Global Glass announced its earnings per share of Rs0.85 for FY21 compared to Rs0.33 in FY20.

The benchmark KSE-100 index rose 228.41 points or 0.49% on Thursday, to close at 46,625.12 points.

Technology, cement, oil and gas marketing companies, and fertiliser sector stocks performed well during the session. Meanwhile, the steel and refinery sectors remained laggard today.

The report added that Octopus Digital scored high on the first day of its IPO, where the target quantity was met in the first 24 minutes after the opening of the bidding session, whereas the total bid size against issue size of 27.35 million shares crossed 6x on the first day.

“This helped Avanceon hit the upper circuit, which is the parent company of Octopus Digital,” it said.

Sectors contributing to the performance included technology (+58 points), banks (+49 points), miscellaneous (+38 points), fertiliser (+36 points), and exploration and production (+31 points).

Individually, stocks that contributed positively to the index include Pakistan Services (+43 points), TRG Pakistan (+34 points), Meezan Bank (+32 points), Systems Limited (+28 points) and Engro Corporation (+24 points).

Stocks that contributed negatively were Lucky Cement (-42 points), HBL (-18 points), Pakistan Tobacco Company (-8 points), Cherat Cement (-7 points) and PSX (-5 points).

Trading volume dropped to 396.4 million shares compared to 477.9 million shares traded on Wednesday (September 8).

During the session, shares of 525 listed companies were traded. At the end of the session, 252 stocks closed in the green, 245 in the red, and 28 remained unchanged.

Ghani Global Holdings was the volume leader with 56.8 million shares, losing Rs3.44 to close at Rs44.95. It was followed by Telecard Limited with 41.1 million shares, losing Rs0.14 to close at Rs22.97, and WorldCall Limited with 20.4 million shares, losing Rs0.01 to close at Rs3.33.