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Thursday March 28, 2024

Stocks rise in post-budget rally

By Our Correspondent
June 15, 2021

Stocks shot up on Monday in a post-budget rally, led by energy, auto, and, cyclical, but late profit-taking claimed a good deal of early gains, dealers said.

Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) KSE-100 Shares Index gained 0.87 percent or 421.36 points to close at 48,726.08 points.

Topline Securities in a note said the index climbed to print another 4-year (day) high of 48,981.82, up 1.40 percent. The market participants cheered the pro-growth budget, which included incentives and reduction in tax rates for various sectors, the brokerage said.

It said reduction in CGT (Capital Gains Tax) from 15 percent to 12.5 percent further boosted confidence at the bourse. On the sector front, removal of Custom Duty on import of HRC (hot-rolled coil) resulted in renewed investor interest in steelmakers like ASL, and ISL that closed the day 6.47 percent and 7.5 percent higher respectively, the Topline report said.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said stocks closed higher led by scrips across the board as investors weighed Federal Budget FY22 relief in the capital gains tax, withholding tax to brokerages, and IMF relaxations on industrial tariff.

Record higher global crude oil prices, relief for the pharmaceutical sector and services exporters in the federal budget led to a bullish close, Mehanti added.

KSE-30 shares index gained 0.87 percent or 168.7 points to close at 19,647.43 points.

As many as 413 scrips were active of which 238 advanced, 161 declined and 14 remained unchanged.

The ready market volumes stood at 1.2 billion shares compared with the turnover of 1.02 billion shares in the last trading session. Brokerage Arif Habib Limited said the market opened on a positive note following the budget announcement on Friday evening.

Dividend anticipation from SOEs (state owned enterprises) helped OGDC (Oil and Gas Development Company) hit upper circuit, followed by positive price performance of PPL (Pakistan Petroleum Limited), the brokerage said.

Similarly, it said, positive measures for footwear, tyre, refinery, steel, and cement industries supported these sectors to perform well during the session. The market was going smoothly upwards after the pre-opening session, but profit-booking brought it down by around 400 points, it said.

The brokerage said however buying momentum continued, which enabled the index to close 380 points higher (unadjusted).

Brokerage JS Global Capital in a report said in petroleum sector OGDC gained 7.5 percent, PPL 4.8 percent, and Mari Petroleum grabbed 0.3 percent on the back of a substantially higher dividend target set by the government for these companies, the brokerage said.

JS Global report further said auto sector was also on the roll with Pak Suzuki gaining 7.5 percent to close at its upper circuit following the government's decision to reduce GST on locally assembled cars (up to 850cc) to 12.50 percent from 17 percent in the budget 2021-22, and an exemption from Federal Excise Duty (FED).

Moreover refinery sector gained to close higher on significant developments in the Federal Budget for the sector, it added. Analysts recommend investors to buy in construction-oriented sectors on dips.

Rafhan Maize, up Rs190 to close at Rs9,690/share, and Wyeth Pakistan, up Rs150.47 to close at Rs2,156.84/share emerged as the highest gainers.

Sapphire Fiber, down Rs37.97 to close at Rs762.03/share, and Faisal Spinning, down Rs20 to end at Rs410/share, suffered the most losses in the day. Byco Petroleum led volumes with a turnover of 109.21 million shares, followed by Hum Network with 108.39 million shares, and WorldCall Telecom recording a trade of 98.04 million shares.