Doha: Qatar Exchange pursued its upswing trend yesterday, adding 80.53 points, or 0.70 percent, to close at 11,562.87 points from 11,482.34 on Thursday.
The volume of the shares traded fell to 13,012,773 from 18,191,769 on Thursday and the value of shares decreased to QR606,105,817.72 from QR856,773,790.54 Thursday.
Among the top gainers were Qatar National Bank, which was up 1.43 percent to QR184.10, Qatar Insurance gained 1.89 percent to QR64.70, Doha Bank added 1.97 percent to QR62.10 and Vodafone Qatar up by 1.67 percent to QR12.20.
The banking and financial sector index was up 1.18 percent while consumer goods and services sector index rose 0.46 percent. The industrial sector gained 0.28 percent, while insurance sector added 0.89 percent.
Elsewhere in the region, property stocks helped Dubai’s bourse lead regional gains yesterday, while Egypt fell for a second session since former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said he would run for president.
Dubai’s index rose 1.3 percent to 4,438 points, its highest close since September 2008.
Shares in heavyweight Emaar rose 1.3 percent to Dh9.95, a level last seen in August 2008. The developer’s stock has rallied for the past two weeks after it hiked its annual dividend and said it would list its shopping malls unit.
Other real estate and construction companies, such as Union Properties, Deyaar, Drake and Scull and Atabtec Holding, were also in the black.
Emirates NBD rose 0.9 percent to Dh8.32 after EFG Hermes raised its fair value estimate on the Dubai bank to Dh10 per share from Dh8.10 and upgraded its rating for ENBD to buy from neutral.
EFG Hermes said it expected ENBD to reclassify its Dh9.4bn ($2.56bn) exposure to Dubai World to a performing loan, which would reduce provisioning.
“We believe that it is now just a matter of time before this exposure is reclassified as a performing loan. Strong improvement in asset values and progress on asset sales has eased concerns on Dubai World’s ability to repay its liabilities, in our view,” EFG Hermes said in a note.
The Cairo bourse, which dropped 2.7 percent last Thursday after Sisi said he would run for president, fell a further 1.9 percent yesterday to trim 2014 gains to 19 percent. But there were signs the correction was slowing and the market closed above the intraday low. “Towards the end of today we saw a bit of recovery and obviously some profit-taking was to be expected after a strong performance year-to-date,” said Simon Kitchen, a strategist at EFG Hermes in Cairo.
“From the valuations perspective, Egypt is not particularly expensive relative to the rest of Middle East and North Africa and has potential for a decent economic recovery, particularly in the second half of this year.”
QNA & Reuters
