December 5 (SeeNews) - The indices of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) gained further ground on Wednesday for a fifth consecutive trading session, led by hefty gains in the five SIF regional investment funds, brokers said.
The BET-FI, which tracks the SIF regional investment funds, was the biggest gainer, jumping 4.52% to 75,383.40 points.
"The SIFs gained strongly because their prices were low enough," one broker told SeeNews. "A couple of weeks ago they were some 20% lower than the record highs hit this summer, which meant that investors in the SIFs had gained only six percent since the beginning of the year."
“What is more, as far as I know, starting next year the SIFs will be obliged to report their consolidated results, which means that they will also report the results of their majority-owned companies," the broker added. "That is an advantage because usually the funds hold stakes in profitable companies.”
The broker added that there could be a small correction in the SIFs' prices on Thursday after Wednesday's rise of more than four percent.
SIF 2 Moldova was the most heavily traded stock in regular trading, closing up 3.71% at 3.34 lei in turnover of 8.9 million lei. SIF 5 Oltenia gained 3.49% to 4.15 lei in the second highest turnover of 6.9 million lei. SIF 4 Muntenia rocketed by 7.08% at 2.27 lei in the third largest turnover of six million lei.
SIF 1 Banat Crisana was also among the biggest gainers, jumping by 5.86% to 3.43 lei in 4.1 million lei turnover.
The five funds accounted for 62% of the total share turnover on the BVB on Wednesday.
The BVB’s blue-chip BET index gained 1.95% to 9,140.24 points. The composite BET-C index added 1.55% to 6,420.21 and the ROTX index of Romania's 11 most liquid stocks, a joint index of the BVB and the Vienna Stock Exchange, rose by 1.77% to 20,218.24 points.
BVB’s turnover doubled to 45.1 million lei ($18.7 million/12.7 million euro). BVB's overall traded share volume increased to 29.4 million on Wednesday from 17.6 million on the previous day.
BRD bank was the most traded blue-chip stock, adding 2.07% to 24.6 lei in 4.8 million lei turnover. The other blue-chip Romanian bank, Banca Transilvania, closed 1.82% higher at 0.84 lei in 4.2 million lei of turnover.
Blue-chip oil and gas group Petrom rose by 1.02% to 0.495 lei in 1.2 million lei of turnover, while blue-chip oil refinery Rompetrol Rafinare jumped 2.94% to 0.105 lei in turnover of 601,000 lei.
“The rest of the market also rose because yesterday was the last day when investors could spend the money from selling their shares to subscribe in the Transgaz IPO,” the broker said. “So, today selling was not that heavy and buyers prevailed.”
On November 26 Romania's state-owned gas transmission company Transgaz launched an IPO of 10% of its shares, which will close on Friday. The broker said the small tranche has already been two times oversubscribed, while the big one has been oversubscribed one time. 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 1.64% up to 4,538.32 points. Turnover on the RASDAQ market doubled to 18.1 million lei on Wednesday. A key factor for the higher turnover was SIF 3 Transilvania's exit from RASDAQ-listed Imatex, a local manufacturer of machines for the textile industry, selling its 31.13% stake for seven million lei.
(1 euro = 3.5513 Romanian lei)