ZAGREB (Croatia), October 10 (SeeNews) – The Crobex share index of the Zagreb Stock Exchange (ZSE) hit another all-time high on Wednesday, swept up on the wave of market euphoria triggered by the recent initial public offering of the country’s top telecom T-HT, traders said.
The IPO attracted unexpectedly strong interest, both from individuals and institutional investors and was more than seven times oversubscribed. In search of easy profit, every 13th Croat has subscribed for shares of the IPO, for many their first experience in trading shares.
“People think prices can only go up, without realising that share prices can also fall,” Hrvoje Stojic, an analyst with Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank told SeeNews.
Turnover in shares and bonds in floor trading was 167.9 million kuna ($33 million/23 million euro), up from 107.3 million kuna a day earlier.
T-HT again was the most liquid share. It added 1.77% to 373 kuna closing, on 71.4 million kuna of turnover in Zagreb. Its price in the IPO was 265 kuna per share. Its shares were floated in Zagreb and London on Friday.
As expected by other analysts, trading volumes have grown as some of the excess funds paid for T-HT flow back to the market, and go mostly to the other blue-chips like shipping companies and construction firms.
Shares of shipping company Atlantska Plovidba surged 4.63% to 3,500 kuna on relatively high 8.1 million kuna of turnover; power transmission equipment maker Dalekovod rose 6.31% to 1,600 kuna on 6.1 million kuna of turnover; research and development company for the construction sector IGH advanced 3.08% to 12,998.97 kuna on 6.2 million kuna of turnover and sugar maker Viro skyrocketed 7.68% to 1,599 kuna on 5.9 million kuna of turnover.
The 30-share Crobex index rose 1.09% to 5,273.2.
The 20-share Croemi index, calculated by commercial bank Raiffeisenbank Austria, added 1.45% to 4,357.19 points. Investors who bet on Crobex or Croemi have gained more than 60% since the beginning of the year.
The CROX index of the seven most traded stocks on the ZSE, which the Vienna Stock Exchange launched this summer, was up 1.12% to end at 2,862.17 points in euro terms.
Overall gainers outnumbered losers by 71 to 40 and 22 shares ended unchanged.
The fixed-income Crobis index dipped 0.11% to 98.3143 points.
(1 euro=7.3140 Croatian kuna)