PSEi up by 1% on Wall Street gains

MANILA, Philippines—The local stock market rallied sharply on Friday as investor sentiment remained buoyant despite a weaker-than-anticipated first quarter economic growth in China.

Taking cue from a strong performance in Wall Street overnight, the main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index added 50.52 points or 1 percent to close at 5,097.30.

The index has ended in positive territory for the second consecutive session as the market started to shake off a long Lenten holiday hangover. This allowed the index to gain by 58.38 points or 1.12 percent this week.

Value turnover for the day amounted to P5.7 billion. Buying was more selective than broad-based, however, as there were only 78 advancers versus 83 decliners while 47 stocks were unchanged.

The market was supported by the holding firm, property and mining/oil counters whose main indices had gone up by 1.7 percent, 1.39 percent and 1.1 percent, respectively.

An outperformer among index stocks is JG Summit, whose share price surged by another 7.2 percent to P33.5 per share. This was after CLSA Asia-Pacific initiated coverage on JGS with a “buy” recommendation and a 12-month target price of P43 per share. Food unit URC likewise benefited, rising by 3.84 percent.

Other index gainers were AGI, Metrobank, SMIC, AC, Megaworld, AP, DMCI and EDC.

Among the non-index stocks, Vista Land outperformed with an 8 percent gain in heavy volume as the stock was perceived to be undervalued relative to its potential earnings for this year and also compared to peers in the property sector, dealers said. Investors also bought up shares of NiHao, Megawide, Security Bank and Puregold.

A failed rocket launch by North Korea and the stronger-than-expected Philippine export earnings in February also likely added to the positive sentiment in the market, some analysts said.

Investors were emboldened by a second day of hefty gains in Wall Street, as the Dow Jones Industrial index surged by 181.19 points or 1.41 percent overnight. Dow Jones futures, however, were down by about 40 points after it was reported that China had grown at its slowest pace in nearly three years in the first quarter. China reported a gross domestic product growth of 8.1 percent year-on-year for the first quarter, a pace which was softer than the market consensus.