Philippine stocks slightly lower
MANILA, Philippines—Local stocks gave up early gains to close slightly lower on Monday as investors turned cautious ahead of the earnings results of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and braced for further delay in the re-commissioning of Energy Development Co.’s Bacon-Manito (BacMan) geothermal plant.
The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index closed 1.75 points, or 0.03 percent, lower at 5,284.16, weighed down by PLDT and EDC. Elsewhere across the region, trading was upbeat on better-than-expected US payrolls report and hopes for further European Union action to curb debt crisis.
The burst of confidence arising from a good stream of local corporate earnings was spoiled by caution ahead of PLDT’s report of first-semester earnings. PLDT, which has a 14.33 percent weight on the index, saw its shares tumble by 1 percent. It was reported that PLDT’s first-half core earnings went down year on year.
Another sentiment dampener was EDC, which shed 2.5 percent on talks that it would not be able to complete rehabilitation work on its geothermal power plant by September. This means that the re-commissioning of the plant will be delayed by over a year.
A fund manager said that with the prospective delay, EDC might incur operating losses in the fourth quarter. “They need to deliver power at high WESM (Wholesale Electricity Spot Market) prices,” the fund manager said.
A source from the Lopez group said EDC might come out with a disclosure on Bacman update soon but did not divulge the content of this update.
Value turnover was thin at P4.55 billion while trading was mixed across counters. The financial, industrial, services and mining/oil counters fell while holding firms and property eked out modest gains.
There were 79 advancers that were edged out by 83 decliners while 42 stocks were unchanged.
The list of actively traded stocks also showed that the market found trading opportunities in more stocks outside of the main-share PSEi.
Apart from PLDT and EDC, First Gen also weighed down the PSEi (-2.17 percent) likely following the sentiment on EDC. BPI, ICTSI and Metrobank also closed slightly lower.
Non-index stocks like MJC (-17.02 percent) and Security Bank (-1.33 percent) also fell on profit-taking after last week’s ascent.
On the other hand, the PSEi’s losses were tempered by the gains of ALI (+1.34 percent), Ayala Corp. (2 percent) and AGI (+1.45 percent). A rebound by Philex after last week’s bloodbath alongside gains by BDO, SMIC and Megaworld also supported the index.
But among the day’s favorites were non-index stocks. Tanduay (+5.7 percent) resumed its climb after Friday’s pause while another beverage-maker Pepsi (+5.28 percent) continued to rise on a strong consumer play and earnings play.
RCBC (+2.16 percent) also jumped after announcing a 35-percent growth in net profit.
