PH stocks rally to bring index above 6,500

photo from pse.com.ph

MANILA, Philippines — Local stocks rallied on Tuesday, allowing the main index to breach 6,500, as investors took heart from unfolding SM property consolidation and the upbeat trading across regional markets.

Rising for the second straight session, the main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index gained 110.81 points or 1.72 percent to close at 6,554.62.

The day’s catalyst was the SM group after the completion of the first step towards towards consolidation.

Joseph Roxas, president of Eagle Equities, said Monday’s block sale gave a “positive psyche” to the market.

Shares of SM units SM Prime, SM Development Corp. and Highlands Prime valued at a total of P64 billion were crossed on the local stock exchange on Monday, resulting in the consolidation of ownership of SMDC and HP in SM Land, which which afterwards be merged with SM Prime.

The third and final step will be SM Prime’s acquisition of specific real estate companies and assets currently held by the Sys’ holding firm SM Investments Corp. (SMIC) in exchange for new shares in SM Prime. This allows the backdoor-listing into SM Prime of several unlisted assets under SM Land, such as 40 hectares of Pico de Loro leisure estate in Hamilo Coast, the 60-hectare land on which the Mall of Asia complex stands on, the hotels and convention centers under parent SMIC and some physical assets of the retail unit.

SM Prime gained by 6.13 percent while parent conglomerate SMIC also rose by 3.11 percent.

URC (+6.47 percent) led the day’s index gainers while AP, Philex, BDO, Megaworld, Petron and FGEN all gained by over 3 percent. Bloomberry also gained by 2.79 percent.

Metrobank, AGI, Meralco, AC, BPI, ICTSI and MPI also contributed to the day’s index gains.

Value turnover for the day amounted to P7.43 billion. There were 98 advancers which edged out 49 decliners while 45 stocks were unchanged.

On the other hand, the day’s index gains were tempered by the most decline on shares of MWC, AEV and PLDT.

Across regional markets, trading was mostly upbeat led by Japan whose benchmark index Nikkei 225 gained 2.57 percent on news that the government is considering a cut in corporate tax to counter the pain of a planned sales tax increase.