Stocks falter on high inflation, pre-poll concerns

KARACHI: After staging the second-best single-day rally the other day, the stock market on Tuesday faltered on profit-taking triggered by a spike in headline inflation and growing uncertainty about upcoming general elections. However, the benchmark KSE 100 index closed above the 64,000 level.

Beating the government’s projection of 21pc with a big margin, the first-half inflation for FY24 surged to 28.79pc compared to 25.02pc in the corresponding period last year on the back of rising food and electricity prices. The reading for December quickened to 29.7pc from 29.2pc in the preceding month.

Topline Securities Ltd said the index demonstrated volatility posting an intraday high of 671.92 points to 65,333.70 and a decline of 448.16 points to 64,213.63.

Wild price fluctuations during the trading hours were observed in Hub Power Company Ltd, Mari Petroleum Company Ltd, Systems Ltd, Engro Corporation Ltd, and Lucky Cement Ltd, collectively incurring a loss of 176 points.

On the flip side, stocks like Pakistan Petroleum Ltd, Oil and Gas Develop­ment Company Ltd and Meezan Bank Ltd contributed to a combined gain of 112 points.

Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said the slump in global equities, growing uncertainty about general elections and investor concerns over challenges of whopping losses of ailing state-owned enterprises played a catalyst role in the market’s bearish close.

The Pakistan People’s Party Sindh leadership warned its past allies — PML-N and JUI-F — to refrain from playing games to delay general elections saying any such move should be considered as contempt of the Supreme Court order.

The KSE-100 index closed at 64,349.60 points after losing 312.18 or 0.48 per cent from the preceding session.

The overall trading volume increased 7.4pc to 671.6 million shares. The traded value increased 31.99pc to Rs24.5bn on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included K-Electric Ltd (79.85m shares), WorldCall Telecom Ltd (46.48m shares), Bank of Punjab (34.95m shares), Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (34.95m shares) and Fauji Cement Ltd (30.47m shares).

Companies registering the biggest increases in their share prices in absolute terms were Sapphire Textile Mills Ltd (Rs86.76), Hoechst Pakistan Ltd (R31.53), Sapphire Fibres Ltd (Rs27.94), Indus Motor Ltd (Rs17.51) and Mehmood Textile Mills Ltd (Rs13.00).

Companies registering the biggest decreases in their share prices in absolute terms were Pakistan Tobacco Ltd (Rs58.47), Mari Petroleum Ltd (Rs47.11) Pakistan Engineering Company Ltd (Rs43.74) Bata Pakistan Ltd (Rs22.15) and Service Industries Ltd (Rs19.45).

Foreign investors, however, remained net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $0.69m.