SOFIA (Bulgaria), August 28 (SeeNews) – Bulgarian stock indices ended mixed on Thursday with car battery maker MonBat gaining most amid the blue-chip companies, brokers said.
The SOFIX index, which includes the 19 blue-chip stocks on the Sofia bourse, rose 1.04% to 1,030.88 points. The broader BG 40 index, which tracks the 40 most liquid companies on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE), ended unchanged at at 250.69.
“MonBat gained the most, more than 3.0% for the day in a relatively large turnover, the reason is (…) the ongoing share buyback carried out by the company,” Severin Vartigov, portfolio manager at BenchMark Asset Management, told SeeNews.
The company on August 1 launched a buyback of up to 0.295% of its share capital to support the stocks’ price amid a negative market trend.
MonBat closed 3.3% higher at 12.18 levs in a volume of 17,300 shares.
Banks were also on the rise on Thursday as recent data about lending growth in the country brought optimism about the sector’s development, Vartigov said.
The credit portfolio of Bulgarian commercial banks jumped by 52.5% on the year to 45.4 billion levs ($34.1 billion/23.2 billion euro) at the end of July, data from the central bank showed on Monday.
Blue-chip lender Bulgarian American Credit Bank (BACB) rose 1.7% to 58.7 levs in a volume of 7,697 shares and Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank) added 0.9% to 91.8 levs with 6,014 stocks changing hands.
The blue-chip index is not likely to move dramatically in the upcoming few weeks and is expected to gravitate around 1,020-1,030 points in that period, Vartigov said.
On Thursday, 41 shares went up, 50 fell and 16 closed flat.
Total turnover, excluding block and other pre-agreed deals, fell to 2.25 million levs from 46 million levs on Wednesday, when a large deal in industrial group Chimimport made for most of the turnover.
The BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, gained 0.25% to 662.79 points and the BG-REIT index, tracking the performance of real estate investment trusts listed on the bourse, inched 0.08% lower to 86.46.
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, appreciated 0.31% to 134.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)
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