SOFIA (Bulgaria), October 24 (SeeNews) – The main stock indices of the bourse in Sofia ended marginally higher on Wednesday despite large-scale selling of shares in big Bulgarian companies, brokers said.
The SOFIX index tracking the 17 most liquid shares on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange edged 0.11% higher at 1,888.20 points, and the broad BG 40 index gained 1.25% to 585.19 points.
“There were sales of shares in large companies, possibly by foreign investors,” the board chairman of Bulgarian asset management company Status Capital, Vladislav Panev, told SeeNews.
He added that among the stocks that came under selling pressure on Wednesday were holding company Chimimport, financial and industrial group Eurohold, mineral mining company Kaolin and First Investment Bank (FIBank).
Chimimport, the largest Bulgarian holding company by market capitalization, lost 0.89% to 16.7 levs, Eurohold slid 1.36% to 7.92 levs. Kaolin was 1.6% off to 18.79 levs, while FIBank fell 0.6% to 12.38 levs.
A possible reason for the large-scale selling was profit-taking by foreign investors after the recent robust growth of Bulgarian stock prices, Panev said. The Bulgarian stock market scored a series of record highs from the second half of August until the middle of October.
Panev also said that another possible reason for Wednesday's selling could have been investments funds cashing in to meet larger buybacks.
BSE's turnover rose to 14.8 million levs from 11.9 million levs on Tuesday.
The market will keep focusing on the initial public offering of road construction firm Trace Hold Group scheduled for Friday, Panev said.
He added that expectations of huge oversubscription of the IPO keeps larger players away and the shares will most probably go to individual investors and smaller funds.
Trace seeks to raise more than 22 million levs ($16 million/11.3 million euro) in the IPO to expand its capacity.
BSE's BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, added 0.02% to 1,170.55. The BG-REIT index, which tracks the performance of real estate investment trusts traded on the stock exchange, fell 1.1% to 103.1.
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, rose 0.86% at 295.05 points.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)