The marginal bullish stock market in which three counters registered share price gains on the Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE) is largely triggered by half-year earnings expectations, analysts have said.
Most of the companies on the 14-counter MSE have indicated that their half year earnings are expected to be higher than the similar period last year.
The MSE report shows that the Malawi All Share Index (Masi), the measure of overall trading activity on the market, settled at 13 451.40 points pushed up by share price gains in Mpico Limited, NBS Bank and National Investment Trust Limited (Nitl).
“The price movements on the counters is due to investors anticipation of better than expected first half 2014 results. The counters recently released trading statements projecting more than 20 percent increase in profit-after-tax for first half of 2014,” said a market analyst.
Mpico’s share price jumped 24 percent to close the week at K2.61 per share from the previous week’s K2.10 per share, NBS Bank gained 115 tambala, a 7.4 percent increase to close at K16.65 per share.
Nitl, the only listed collective investment scheme, closed the week at K33.15 per share, a gain of five tambala.
The domestic share index, the gauge of domestic counters’ performance, settled at 10 580.55 points from 10 554.03 points in the previous week, while the foreign share index , anchored by one counter, Old Mutual plc (OML) remained stable at 1 740.76 points due to no share price gain on the counter.
In the week, according to the market report, slightly over one million shares were transacted, raising K64.8 million in 38 deals.
