2011’s first price band slapped on PC House shares

PC House yesterday became the New Year’s first company whose shares were slapped with the contentious 10% price band by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The move follows PC House share price gaining by 50% between 29th December closing and yesterday with around 34 million shares traded.

SEC’s exact formulae on the price band determination is unknown but it monitors price movements of all counters on a daily rollover basis for the preceding review period of five days and tracks the unusual price movements through a formula based on price volatility and volume traded adjusted to public holding. Until January 26 i.e. for 15 more market days PC House will be subjected to a 10% maximum high or low price band.

PC House whose shares post-IPO had a relatively poor performance closed last week up by Rs. 3.10 to Rs. 11.30 with 6.9 million shares. Its 52-week highest was Rs. 14.70 and the lowest was Rs. 8.50. The five day period taken into account by SEC starts from 29th December closing which was Rs. 10.70 after it dipped by 30 cents on that from the previous closing with 0.3 million shares. However during the past four market days it gained by 20 cents, 40 cents and Rs. 2.10 (Monday) and Rs. 2.70 (yesterday). Last two days saw over 27 million of PC House shares traded. It peaked to an intra-day high of Rs. 16.80 before closing at Rs. 16.10, up by 20% over Monday. In fact with 17.6 million shares traded PC House generated the highest turnover of Rs. 275.1 million yesterday.

The gain since this week and the volume are unusually high prompting analysts to speculate the stock may have been subject to manipulation.

For Asia’s best performing and world’s second best performing stock market the 2011 dawn sans a single stock in the price band with the last being on 24th December.

Bourse gains strength

The Colombo stock market gained better strength yesterday as against its 2011 debut doubling gain percentage wise and topping Rs. 3 billion turnover.

The ASPI gained by 0.66% higher in comparison to 0.3% on Monday.  Year to date gain of ASPI remains below 1% at 0.99%.

John Keells Stock Brokers said “The indices continued to trend higher with retail interest on second tier stocks accounting for a bulk of turnover.”

NDB Stockbrokers described yesterday’s market performance as “New year optimism continues.”

It said buying momentum continued on small and mid cap counters mainly backed by active retail participation. The Indices ended on a positive note posting a healthy turnover across the board. Manufacturing and Diversified sectors were the highest contributors to the market turnover while both indices increased by 2.55% and 0.75% respectively.

Five crossings were recorded for 156,000 shares of John Keells Holdings at Rs. 298; 250,000 shares of Lanka Tiles at Rs. 140; 100,000 shares of Sampath Bank at Rs. 280; 95,800 shares of HNB Bank-(Non-voting) at Rs. 215 and 2,000,000 shares of Dialog Axiata at Rs 11.80.

Foreigners were net sellers for the second consecutive day with yesterday’s net outflow being Rs. 195 million.

Asia Capital said PC House (biggest turnover generator) saw retail interest whilst, Richard Peries and Grain Elevators also witnessed similar interest during the day.

Rupee at over 2-yr high on exporter dlr demand  

Sri Lanka’s rupee edged up to 110.85/.86 a dollar, its highest since 11 December, 2008, from Monday’s 110.92/95 as exporters converted dollars, currency dealers said. The rupee rose 3.07 percent in 2010.