Blue chips rally at start of 2Q

Written by Joseph Chin
Thursday, 01 April 2010 09:58

KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips kicked off the second quarter on Thursday, April 1 on a strong note, powered by gains in CIMB, Sime and DiGi.

The FBM KLCI was up 11.94 points higher at 1,332.51. Turnover was 128.6 million shares valued at RM144 million. There were 216 gainers, 107 losers and 161 stocks unchanged.

Hwang DBS Vickers Research said except for Malaysia, all the remaining Asian stock exchanges that we track fell yesterday, led by Singapore (-1.6%), Philippines (-1.3%) and Indonesia (-0.7%). And combined with an overnight flat performance on Wall Street, Bursa Malaysia is expected to come under profit-taking pressures ahead.

“Still, we reckon the immediate downside risk is relatively limited at this juncture. Its benchmark FBM KLCI will probably slip a bit but should remain above the first support level of 1,305 for now.

“On the corporate front, the bits and pieces of news flows that emerged from the Invest Malaysia 2010 conference (which ended yesterday) may stir up some follow-up interest in selected stocks,” said the research house.

Oversea Enterprise opened at 25.5 sen, which was 2.5 sen above its offer price of 23 sen when it made its debut.

Nestle was the top gainer, rising as much as 32 sen to RM34.46 while Tanjong added 24 sen to RM18.18 while KL Kepong and CIMB advanced 22 sen to RM16.90 and RM14.28 while DiGi added 20 sen to RM22.78 while Sime Darby gained 14 sen to RM8.85.

MRCB extended its gains, rising four sen to RM1.69 with 6.72 million shares done while MRCB-CA added three sen to 25 sen. MPHB slipped one sen to RM2.37 but its call warrants MPHB-CA edged up one sen to 37 sen.

BCorp-LC fell five sen to RM1.20 with 8.9 million units done and the shares seven sen lower at RM1.68 after it announced net loss of RM155.12 million on the back of RM1.66 billion revenue in its third quarter ended Jan 31, 2010.