Bosnian Bourse Indices Fall, Sarajevo Turnover Soars on Debut Corporate Bond

The SASX-10 index, tracking the 10 blue chips on the Sarajevo Stock exchange (SASE), Bosnia’s bigger bourse, fell by 3.90% from last Friday to 1,813.55 points.

“The Sarajevo market is still weak, with indices and other prices trending down. The only interesting thing this week was the concluded debut corporate bond issue on SASE – by UniCredit Bank d.d. Mostar,” Aida Nusinovic of the Sarajevo-based brokerage Hypo Vrijednosnice told SeeNews.

The nominal value of the bond issue was 60 million marka ($43.2 million/31.1 million euro), distributed in 60,000 bonds, Nusinovic said. All bonds were sold at their nominal value. According to a UniCredit Bank filing to SASE earlier this week, the bonds’ annual coupon is the EURIBOR value at six months (EURIBOR 6M) plus 1.0%, while their maturity is five years.

SASE’s turnover this week rose to 63.17 million marka from 14.03 million marka the previous week.

“Aside from the UniCredit bonds, turnover was meagre, not exceeding 200,000 to 300,000 marka on a daily basis, and rising to 1.4 million marka on Friday,” Nusinovic said.

SASX-10’s top performer was Bosnia’s biggest insurer, Sarajevo Osiguranje, which gained 5.38% to an average weighted price of 18.99 marka, SASE said in its weekly trading report.

The biggest loser in the index was ABS Banka, owned by Austria’s Steiermarkische Sparkasse, which lost 17.39% to an average weighted price of 380.00 marka.

Sarajevo-based Energoinvest-TSO posted the highest turnover of some 1.28 million marka this week. It had an average weighted price of 8.06 marka on Friday, up 101.50% from the previous trading on September 4.

SASE’s other index, BIFX, which tracks investment funds, fell 1.40% this week to 3,277.13 points.

The benchmark BIRS index of Bosnia’s smaller bourse, the Banja Luka Stock Exchange (BLSE), lost further ground as turnover swelled to 2.67 million marka from 1.61 million marka last week.

BIRS lost 0.67% from the previous week to 1,471.86 points. The BLSE investment fund index FIRS fell by a weekly 2.99% to 2,953.63 points.

Most traded on the official market were the shares of passenger transport and tourism company Autoprevoz, with a turnover of 279,820 marka and an average weighted price of 0.002 marka, down 9.09% from last Friday.

ZIF VB Fond had the highest turnover of 132.403 marka among investment funds this week, gaining 3.81% to close at a weighted average price of 5.99 marka on Friday. The fund was also the week's biggest gainer.

Banja Luka-based flower and herb grower Cvjecar had the highest turnover of 384,908 marka on the free market, reaching an average price of 0.80 marka on Friday, up 33.33% over the week.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bosnian marka)