RIYADH, 30 January 2004 — The Saudi stock market closed the week up one percent after a mixed performance on the announcement of corporate results, Bakheet Financial Advisers (BFA) said yesterday. Tadawul All-Shares Index (TASI) finished the week Wednesday at 4,584.26 points, up from last week’s closing of 4,538.72 points, BFA said.
The market closed a day earlier than usual because of the Muslim Eid Al-Adha holiday starting on Sunday and will not reopen before Feb. 7. The TASI is now 3.3 percent up since the start of January.
“The performance of the market was mixed this week. SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries Corp) soared by five percent, pushed by record profits in FY 2003 of SR6.71 billion ($1.8 billion), a 136 percent increase over FY 2002.
“On the other hand, Al-Rajhi Banking and Investment Corp did not react positively to the highest annual profits in its history,” BFA said. Despite record profits of $543 million, Al-Rajhi’s “stock price went down 5.5 percent because investors expected the distribution of bonus shares,” but this did not happen, the financial analysts said.
Trading value during the week reached SR13.6 billion ($3.6 billion), down from last week’s SR16.6 billion ($4.4 billion). Stock prices of 37 companies rose, 30 saw their shares decline and three were unchanged.
SABIC and Saudi Telecom, up five percent and 1.2 percent respectively, were the main gainers among the top 10 blue chips. Al-Rajhi was the biggest loser.
Saudi Arabia has the largest capitalization of any Arab stock market with more than $142 billion, but operates only on an interbank basis.