SMC raises P17B from sale of 5.7% stake in Meralco

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MANILA, Philippines—Most local stocks were in the doldrums on Friday, weighed down by a discounted share-sale on Manila Electric Co. and weak regional markets.

The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index slipped by 27.33 points or 0.41 percent to close at 6,621.02.

There were 55 advancers against 85 decliners while 56 stocks were unchanged.

The day’s biggest decliner and most actively traded stock was Meralco, which tumbled by 8.2 percent to close at P277.60 as an initial 5.7 percent share-sale by conglomerate San Miguel Corp. was closed at a discounted price of P270 per share.

The P17.4 billion Meralco block sale bloated the day’s turnover to P26.57 billion on Friday.

Apart from Meralco, DMCI, AEV, Jollibee, Metrobank, BDO, ICTSI, Globe, ALI and Belle also lost ground.

On the other hand, the day’s index decline was tempered by gains eked out by Bloomberry, AGI, MWC, AP, FGEN, MPI and Megaworld.

For the week, the index was still up by 46.81 points or a modest 0.7 percent as investors reassessed earlier fears of the US Federal Reserve’s tapering of asset buying activities.

On Friday, however, regional markets mostly faltered on profit-taking and also following reports of lower-than-expected earnings of US technology stocks Google and Microsoft.