Karachi, January 05, 2018 (PPI-OT): Investors rejoice at the local bourse, KSE-100 index up 5% WoW
The bulls rejoiced at the local bourse as the KSE-100 index ended the week (+5.1% WoW) with its twelfth consecutive positive daily closing. The performance remained particularly commendable given damning tweet by US President Mr. Donald Trump, following which US suspended military- related funding to Pakistan and placed Pakistan on a special watch list. Foreign investors and local Mutual Funds remained busy in value buying with respective US$21.8mn and US$8.4mn worth of net buying recorded during the outgoing week.
On the other hand, local Individuals were net sellers of US$12.5mn. Value buying was visible in large cap sectors such as (1) Cements (+8.0% WoW), (2) Banks (+6.8% WoW) and (3) E and Ps (+4.2% WoW). Volumes too remained decent, with average daily turnover of 213mn shares/day (-0.8% WoW) and traded value of US$77mn/day (-2.8% WoW). Apart from this, key highlights of the week were (1) release of CPI inflation numbers (4.57% YoY in Dec-2017), (2) release of cement dispatches numbers (+4.94% YoY in Dec-2017), (3) release of petroleum sales numbers (+11.0% YoY in Dec-2017), (4) export of 40k MTs of urea to Sri Lanka by local manufacturers and (5) hydrocarbon discovery at Baratai block by OGDC.
Cement offtake beats street estimates
As per data released by APCMA, cement dispatches increased by more than 12% YoY to clock-in at 22.24mn tons in 1HFY18 despite subdued exports during the said period. The data showed that local consumption surged by 17.4% YoY to 19.83mn tons whereas cement exports dropped by 17.3% YoY to 2.41mn tons. During the month of Dec-2017, cement sales edged up by 6.8% YoY to 3.41mn tons, while exports decreased by 11.3% YoY to 0.33mn tons.
Petroleum product sales plummet mainly due to FO
Petroleum products sales in Dec-2017 declined by 11.4% YoY to 1,872k tons. Decline in sales was mainly because of plummeting Furnace Oil (FO) sales (down 44.6% YoY to 431k tons). White oil products continued to march upwards with Motor Spirit (MS) sales clocking-in at 602k tons (+11.8% YoY) and High Speed Diesel (HSD) sales at 759k tons (+9.0% YoY).
PSMC raises car prices by Rs10k-Rs20k
Pak Suzuki Motor Company (PSMC) raised prices of some of its variants, effective from the Jan 1, 2018, by Rs10-20k. Prices of Bolan and Ravi have been increased by Rs10k, Mehran VX and VXR by Rs10k (CNG variants prices unchanged), while prices of Wagon-R VXR and VXL have been hiked by Rs20k.