JEDDAH/AMMAN: Saudi shares extended losses last week despite better-than-expected results of blue chip firms, particularly the banking sector.

The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) shed 1.52 percent last week, closing at 8,861.24 points from 8,998.28 points previous week. TASI is currently 19.7 percent lower than the year’s start.

“The Saudi market has been affected by other bourses in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and global stock markets,” the Riyadh-based Bakheet Investment Group (BIG) said in its weekly report. The BIG expected market moves to be “rather cautious” until the release of results of blue chip companies, particularly the Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC).

Shares of Halwani Bros, which started trading on Wednesday, jumped 53.75 percent to SR30.75. Abdullah Al-Othaim Market Co.’s shares increased 41.88 percent to SR56.75. Al-Othaim made the Saudi stock market debut last Monday.

Shares of insurance companies suffered badly last week. Tawuniya’s shares plunged by 21.76 percent to SR66.50, Saudi Arabian Cooperative Insurance Co.’s by 19.67 percent to SR60.25, Al-Ahlia Insurance Co.’s by 19.46 percent to SR60 and Saudi Indian Company for Cooperative Insurance’s by 17.78 percent to SR89.

The stock market turnover was SR35.45 billion last week compared to SR38.61 billion in the previous week.

Arab stocks lost further ground last week as investors assumed caution over the persistent Iranian nuclear standoff and the half-year results of listed firms, financial analysts said yesterday.

However, they expected regional bourses to recover in the coming couple of weeks when all semi-annual results of businesses were expected to be out. “We believe political developments and uncertainty as to the second quarter results still put downward pressure on stock prices,” an Amman-based portfolio manager told Arab News. “However, we think regional stocks will benefit in the coming weeks from the half-year corporate profits and the surging oil prices,” he said.

Jordanian shares plunged over the past couple of days apparently in response to leaks by the local press that the government was mulling the imposition of a tax on the profits of stock trading. However, despite a denial of the report by the government on Wednesday, prices at the Amman Stock Exchange declined a further 1.0 percent on Thursday. The ASE all-share price index closed week at 4,563 points marginally higher from last week’s close at 4,556 points, according to the market’s weekly report.

Kuwaiti shares rebounded on Thursday after declining for three weeks in a row and analysts said that prices could be bottoming out. The KSE all-share price index lost 0.6 percent last week, closing at 14,807 points from 14,895 points previous week.

The benchmark price of the United Arab Emirates stock exchanges of Dubai and Abu Dhabi shed 2.3 percent last week, closing at 5,872 points from 6,011 points previous week.

The GulfBase GCC Index declined 1.51 percent to 6,586.01 last week. The value of GCC traded shares fell 11 percent to $15.09 billion and volume dropped 19.68 percent to 4.28 billion of shares.

Negative performance

The BMG Saudi index maintained its negative performance for four successive weeks, going down last week by 0.8 percent to 486.24 points. The market turnover also depreciated, week-on-week, by 11.9 percent to SR14.5 billion ($3.9 billion), compared to SR16.4 billion ($4.4 billion) registered the week before. The number of shares traded throughout the week reached 362.1 million shares, up by 8.8 percent, from 332.8 traded during the previous week. The average price-earnings (P/E) ratio for 2007 was 28.1 times, whereas the price-to-book (P/B) ratio was 4.6 times.

Five sectors saw their closing levels go down, whereas the banking and industrial sectors appreciated, each by 0.4 percent.

The worst performance was registered by the agricultural sector, which saw a dramatic 12.2 percent drop in its closing level.

The beta coefficient for the sectors was 1.03 for the industrial sector, 1.00 for the banking sector, 0.99 for the services sector, and 0.94, 0.74, 0.69, and 0.34, for the agricultural, telecommunications, electricity, and insurance sectors, respectively.

Only five shares appreciated, whereas all the remaining shares declined.