JKH and Dialog ride Colombo Bourse boom best

Two star stocks dominated the Bull Run in the Colombo Bourse last week helping the latter to establish itself as world’s best performing bourse. The country’s premier blue chip achieved a milestone by notching up the highest ever market capitalisation for a listed entity in local currency terms with a value of Rs. 221 billion.

This was after it closed the week at a record Rs. 355.10, up by 18.3% or Rs. 55 after peaking to a high of Rs. 360. Given investor craving for JKH, analysts expect the stock to cross a fresh milestone of being worth US$ 2 billion today. At Friday’s exchange rate, the market cap of JKH was slightly below the US$ 2 billion mark.

JKH saw a total of 7.6 million of its shares traded last week creating a turnover of Rs. 2.48 billion. Bulk of it or nearly 6 million shares were transacted on Thursday with 5 million bought by EPF and Captains being sellers. If analysts regarded the deal done at Rs. 327 was at its best price, then they were wrong as JKH closed the next day up by further Rs. 28. For last week’s exponential rise (ASPI up by near 4% or 259.3 points enabling Colombo to finish the week at up 111.13% beating Mongolia’s growth), JKH’s contribution was a high 103.75 points.

Dialog was the other star last week. After being stuck at Rs. 9 level for months, Dialog has been climbing up steadily and surely. It closed the week at Rs. 13.10, up by Rs. 1.10 or 8% whilst the peak was  Rs. 13.80. This propelled Dialog to cross the Rs. 100 billion market capitalisation figure to close at  Rs. 106.6 billion thereby reclaiming the second most valuable stock status. Dialog made the second highest contribution to ASPI’s gain with 27.15 points.

Commercial Bank after high gains for two consecutive weeks, lost steam though it closed up by Rs. 9.10 to Rs. 294.50 whilst establishing a new 52-week high of Rs. 295.

As opposed to significant contribution to previous two week’s gain in ASPI, COMBank chipped in only with 9.72 points last week.

The bullish and active banking sector contribution to ASPI was spearheaded by DFCC Bank which peaked to a high of Rs. 550 before closing the week at Rs. 491.80, still up by Rs. 55. This was purely on the impressive news of one for one bonus issue. DFCC’s made the third largest contribution to ASPI’s gain with 23 points. Despite a dream run, DFCC is still languishing as the 11th most valuable stock struggling to overcome 10th place LOLC.

HNB (7th most valuable stock) and NDB made the fourth and fifth biggest contribution as both closed on new highs after sharp gains last week.

The market last week got back to its lively ways during the latter part of the week after it took a breather on Monday and Tuesday. During the week ASPI crossed the 7,000 mark where the average daily turnover of Rs. 4.4 billion with Friday topping the highest with Rs. 6 billion. As predicted last week in Daily FT, the ASPI entered October above 7,500 levels.

Colombo Dockyard saw a stake of near 6.2% changing hands on Friday whilst heavyweight Dialog Axiata witnessed institutional buying during the week. Further investor interest was seen in Amaya Reef, Colombo Land and Development and Bogala Graphite.