BUCHAREST (Romania), November 30 (SeeNews) – All four Romanian stock market indices advanced by more than two percent on Friday amid lower turnover and trading volumes, brokers said.
"The rises today are not surprising at all. We’ve had some rises in the past days, which have confirmed that the period of big losses is over. The current prices are very good for the mid-term," one broker told SeeNews.
The Bucharest Stock Exchange's (BVB) blue-chip BET index gained 2.92% to 8,893.36 points. The composite BET-C index added 2.23% to 6,278.77 and the ROTX index of Romania's 11 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, rose by 2.66% to 19,733.58. The BET-FI, which tracks the SIF regional investment funds, advanced by 2.60% to 70,921.03.
Stock turnover on the BVB fell to 43.7 million lei ($18.4 million/12.4 million euro) from 58.6 million on Thursday. BVB's overall volume dropped to 28.1 million shares from 157 million on the previous day.
“The rises could also be attributed to the higher than projected nine-month economic growth .The estimates were for 5.5% [year-on-year] growth and it was actually 5.8%,” the broker said.
Romania's gross domestic product (GDP), computed in current prices, reached an estimated 266.6 billion lei in the nine months through September, up by a real 5.8% from the same period last year, the country's statistics board, INS, said earlier on Friday.
SIF 2 Moldova was the most heavily traded stock in regular trading, closing up 3.93% at 3.17 lei in turnover of 9.5 million lei. SIF 4 Muntenia added 1.94% to 2.10 lei in the second highest turnover of 6.6 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia ended up 2.86% at 3.95 lei in the third largest turnover of 5.1 million lei.
BRD bank was the most traded blue-chip, adding 3.48% to 23.8 lei in 4.2 million lei turnover. The other blue-chip bank, Banca Transilvania, gained 2.48% to 0.825 lei in 3.2 million lei of turnover.
Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom closed unchanged at 0.49 lei in 1.9 million lei of turnover. Blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare jumped 6.12% to 0.104 lei in turnover of 317,000 lei.
”I think the market will have the potential to rise by some 10% from the current levels by the end of the year. Transgaz will be a major factor of that. I expect it to be 10 times oversubscribed. If most of the money that left the market in the past months was mainly meant for Transgaz, then there will be a big oversubscription. So far, there is a 50% subscription for the small tranche,” the broker said.
On Monday, Romania's state-owned gas transmission company Transgaz launched an IPO of 10% of its shares, which will close on December 7. The broker said he expected the subscription rate will be 3-4 times for the small tranche, adding, “As for the bigger tranche, we will have to see how much money the big investors will have for Romania.”
Around 60% of the shares will be offered to investors that will have to subscribe for shares worth more than 500,000 lei, while the rest of the issue will be offered to small investors who will be able to subscribe for shares worth less than 500,000 lei.
Rasdaq-C, the composite index of the over-the-counter market RASDAQ, ended 1.53% up to 4,416.98. Turnover on the RASDAQ market rose to 12.7 million lei from 8.1 million on Thursday. Gas transport firm Armax was the most traded stock on the RASDAQ, closing 14.15% higher at 0.355 lei in turnover of 2.2 million lei.
(1 euro = 3.5099 Romanian lei)