Shares make modest rebound

The local stock index rebounded on Friday as the slump in the last five days attracted selective buying.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index recouped 16.25 points or 0.3 percent to close at 5,369.72.  For the week, the index lost 70.12 or 1.3 percent, pulling back after the run-up to a record high last week.

All the counters were up except for holding firms. The mining/oil counter posted the day’s biggest gain at 1.47 percent as investors picked up oversold shares of Philex Mining.

Value turnover was heavy at P27.5 billion which included the cross of a P21.65-billion block of BPI shares which were bought by Ayala Corp. from Development Bank of Singapore.  The direct shares sold by DBS to Ayala consisted of about 309.28 million common shares at P70 per share.

There were 89 advancers against 74 decliners for the day while 34 stocks were unchanged.

The index was led higher by Philex (+3.23 percent), BDO (+2.38 percent), MPI (+1.47 percent), SM Prime (+1.42 percent), URC (+1.3 percent), ICTSI (+1.11 percent) and AP (+1.05 percent). PLDT, AGI, ALI and AEV also contributed to the PSEi’s gains.

Among non-index stocks, the outperformers were APM (+27 percent), Bloomberry (+4.1 percent) and Puregold (+2.17 percent).  APM, despite the company’s repeated denial, is the subject of a backdoor-listing speculation.  Bloomberry and Puregold, on the other hand, were respectively benefiting from gaming and consumer plays.

On the other hand, the PSEi’s gains were tempered by some profit-taking on SM (-1.28 percent), AC (-0.19 percent), Metrobank (-0.55 percent), EDC (-1.13 percent) and Megaworld (-0.43 percent).  Among non-index stocks, Greenergy also succumbed to profit-taking (-5 percent). Doris C. Dumlao