December 10 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian stocks fell on Monday as a series of initial public offerings kept pushing prices down, brokers said.
The blue-chip SOFIX index, which includes the 16 most liquid stocks on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange, fell 1.78% to 1,729.02 points and the broad BG 40 index slid 2.16% to 520.39.
“The bourse is still under the pressure from the series of IPOs taking place at the end of the year,” Vladislav Panev, the board chairman of Bulgarian asset management company Status Capital, told SeeNews.
Several domestic firms, including road builder Trace Group Hold and construction and energy firm Enemona, have floated shares this autumn.
Panev added that he expects bearish sentiment to prevail this week until the end of the public offering of grain company Zarneni Hrani Bulgaria. Subscriptions for domestic investors start on Wednesday and will run for three days. Subscriptions for foreign investors started on Monday and will continue for five days. Zarneni Hrani is owned by blue-chip holding company Chimimport, shares in which closed at 15.90 levs, down 0.07%.
Investors are seeking cash to participate in IPOs or just to feel comfortable ahead of the holidays, Panev said.
Losers outnumbered gainers by 77 to 46, while 18 shares ended unchanged. “As a whole the trading activity was low, excluding some cross deals and selling by certain investors,” Panev said. Overall turnover on the BSE fell to 17.2 million levs from 25.5 million on Friday.
Among the stocks affected by the selling were paint and varnish maker Orgachim and lead and zinc smelter OTZK. Orgachim lost 4.6% to 658 levs, while OTZK ended 2.6% lower at 92.50 levs.
The bourse's BG-REIT index, which tracks the performance of real estate investment trust shares, edged 0.17% lower to 101.5 and the BG TotalReturn30 (BG TR30) index, in which companies with a free float of at least 10% have equal weight, dipped 1.08% to 1,091.31. 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, fell 0.47% to 277.13 points.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)