MIA and MaltaPost reach new highs

During this morning’s trading session on the Malta Stock Exchange, the share prices of Malta International Airport plc and MaltaPost plc reached new highs of €1.78 and €1.01 respectively. Moreover gains in the equities of the two large banks offset the decline registered in International Hotel Investments plc helping the MSE Share Index to advance by 0.6% to 3,858.115 points.

The share price of MIA continued to build on its recent gains and edged a further 1.7% higher to a new multi-year high of €1.78. Last week MIA published the 2010 traffic results revealing a 12.8% growth in passengers to a record 3.29 million. Tomorrow the airport operator will be holding a press conference to provide further details on the 2010 traffic statistics as well as its forecast for 2011.

MaltaPost touched a new all-time high of €1.01 mid-way during today’s trading session but dropped back to the €1.00 level to end the day unchanged. Following last week’s high trading activity in the equity of the postal operator, a further 10,989 shares traded this morning.

In the banking sector, the share prices of Bank of Valletta plc and HSBC Bank Malta plc both closed higher today. BOV’s share price added 0.5% to €3.15 on high volumes of 26,307 shares with HSBC advancing by 1.9% to €3.47 on lower activity of 6,325 shares.

On the other hand, International Hotel Investments dropped 1% to €0.97 on increased volumes totalling over 78,000 shares. Last week, IHI announced that its new flagship property in London has started to accept bookings for April 2011.

Also in the hospitality sector, last Friday evening Island Hotels Group Holdings plc announced that its financial statements as at 31 October 2010 will be published on Monday 21 February 2011. In anticipation of this announcement, Island Hotels revealed that its full-year results will show an operating profit but an overall net loss before tax mainly due to a decline in the vacation ownership business. On the other hand, the hotel side of the business performed better than projected while the event catering business generated strong financial results. Further details available at https://rizzofarrugia.com/news-events/2011/information-on-full-year-results/

On the bond market, the Rizzo Farrugia MGS Index declined for the tenth consecutive day. The Treasury is shortly expected to announce a new Malta Government Stock offering to coincide with next week’s redemption of €93.2 million 6.25% MGS 2011.