December 14 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian stocks indices were mostly down on Friday ahead of a long-anticipated debut of road construction company Trace Group Hold and the release of the results of grain company Zarneni Hrani's public offering, brokers said.
The blue-chip SOFIX index, which includes the 16 most liquid stocks on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange, lost 0.56% to 1,708.45 points, and the broad BG 40 index fell 0.53% to 513.12 points.
“The market lacked a clear direction. As a whole, it was waiting for the result from [the public offering of] Zarneni Hrani and how the trading in shares of Trace will begin,” Tihomir Kaundziev, financial analyst at investment intermediary Beta Corp, told SeeNews.
Zarneni Hrani closed its up to 240 million levs public offering on Friday. Trade in the shares of Trace will start on Saturday.
The bourse in Sofia will be open on Saturday, which is a regular working day as December 31, Monday, is a public holiday.
Investors offered 1,480 times more money than the 22.1 million lev that Trace sought to raise in Bulgaria’s most heavily oversubscribed initial public offering held in late October.
BSE’s turnover, excluding block trading and other pre-agreed deals, fell to 8.7 million levs from 13.9 million levs on Thursday.
Among the most traded shares on Friday was blue-chip holding company Chimimport, the owner of Zarneni Hrani, which gained 1.3% to close at 15.9 levs with almost 112,000 shares changing hands.
Decliners outnumbered advancers by 73 to 57 with 21 stocks ending unchanged.
On the losing side were liquid stocks like Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank), Doverie Obedinen Holding and pain and varnish maker Orgachim.
Corpbank lost 0.53% to 93.25 levs, Doverie was down 0.9% to 14.59 levs, while Orgachim fell 0.5% to 651 levs.
Kaundziev said the declines in most liquid shares were most likely due to investors selling to cash in for the public offering of Zarneni Hrani.
Among the gainers was holding company Severcoop Gamza, which added 2.8% to 4.27 levs on Friday after a rise of 2.2% the previous day.
Severcoop Gamza said on Wednesday it will sell its 93.13% stake in local shoe producer Record in an auction on the BSE, seeking at least 2.29 million levs from the sale.
“The news had a positive impact on Gamza,” Kaundziev said.
The bourse's BG-REIT index, which tracks the performance of real estate investment trust shares, gained 0.45% to 100.25 points and the BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, was 0.19% down to 1,082.44.
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, slid 0.71% to 271.70 points.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)