Blue Chip Holding Roads Drags Bulgarian Stock Indices Down

The SOFIX index, which includes the 20 most liquid stocks on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE), slid 1.96% to 482.51 points, while the broader BG 40 index, which tracks the 40 most traded shares on the bourse, lost 1.78% to 138.73.

“We are once again at odds with sentiment on the foreign markets, they rise and we don't,” Borislav Simeonov, a broker at Delta Stock, told SeeNews. “This is mainly because of Holding Roads,” he said.

The holding company's stock has been drifting lower in recent sessions in slim volumes ahead of the start of trading on Tuesday in its new shares from a 70-for-1 bonus issue, he added.

Holding Roads plummeted 12.5% to 7.0 levs on Monday with just 16 shares changing hands.

“Trade is very uneventful, volumes are weak and the market is slipping little by little,” Simeonov said. He added that corporate results, most of them issued at the end of last week, had almost no impact on the market.

BSE's turnover, excluding block and other pre-agreed deals, fell to 1.5 million levs ($978,000/767,000 euro) from 6.3 million levs on Friday.

On Monday, decliners led gainers by 55 to 20 and 10 shares closed unchanged.

The BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, lost 1.26% to 354.6 points and the BG-REIT index, tracking the performance of real estate investment trusts, fell 0.73% to 54.53.

The Dnevnik 20 index, calculated by local business daily Dnevnik from the share prices of the 20 leading companies in terms of liquidity and market capitalisation, plunged 2.82% to 68.01 points.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)