KL shares slightly lower at midday

SHARE prices on Bursa Malaysia were slightly lower at midday today as investors continued to take profits in selected heavyweights, dealers said.At noon break, the benchmark Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) declined 4.04 points, or 0.424 percent, to 949.67, dragged down by losses mostly in Public Bank after it reported lower financial performance in the first quarter yesterday.

The KLCI, which opened 2.06 points lower at 951.65, moved between 946.72 and 952.7 during the whole session.Besides banking and financial stocks, interests were seen in Tenaga, which would announce its second-quarter result later today.

The Finance Index declined 35.96 points to 7,208.39, the Industrial Index eased 8.82 points to 2,222.17 and the Plantation Index was 21.23 points lower at 4,917.43.

Of the FTSE-BM Index series, the FBMEMAS went down by 29.3 points to 6,261.47, the FBM30 decreased 35.34 points to 6,060.46, the FBM2BRD edged down 2.9 points to 4,087.08 and the FBM-MDQ dropped by 14.89 points to 3,208.49.

Losers led gainers by 279 to 229 while 179 counters were unchanged, 557 untraded and 37 others suspended. The market volume amounted to 906.02 million shares valued at RM644.21 million.Leading the actives, KNM edged up 1.5 sen to 51.5 sen, UEM Land added two sen to 95.5 sen while Axiata Group-OR eased eight sen to 57 sen.

For the banking and financial stocks, Maybank added two sen to RM4.16, Public Bank eased 15 sen to RM8.30 and Bumiputra-Commerce declined five sen to RM7.85.Of the heavyweights, Sime Darby and Tenaga shed five sen each to RM6.40 and RM6.55 respectively and IOI Corp declined six sen to RM4.24. -- Bernama