Activity in local equities tumbles to near 2-month low

 

The MSE Equity Price Index partly recovered some of yesterday’s sharp drop as it rebounded by 0.2% to 3,856.828 points. Nonetheless, trading activity was extremely subdued as only €0.04 million worth of shares changed hands across four equities. Download today’s Equity Market Summary.

Malta International Airport plc rallied 3.2% to regain the €5.10 level on a total of 5,000 shares.

A single deal of 1,000 shares left the equity of Bank of Valletta plc unchanged at the €1.04 level.

Simonds Farsons Cisk plc also closed the day unchanged at the €8.30 level across 1,257 shares. Tomorrow, Farsons is due to publish its annual financial results for the year ended 31 January 2020.

Meanwhile, Tigné Mall plc slid 10.6% back to the €0.76 level albeit on just 5,500 shares.

Today, HSBC Bank Malta plc issued an announcement explaining that it has no information that requires a further company announcement with respect to reports published across the local media referring to an article published by an international news agency speculating on the HSBC Group’s future global strategy. HSBC Malta also noted that as has been the case in the past, the bank’s media policy is not to comment on speculative stories. The article published on the ‘Financial Times’ reported that HSBC Holdings plc is now evaluating the possibility of intensifying its plans for restructuring its business worldwide after this was temporarily put on hold following the developments related to ‘COVID-19’. The article also explained that the bank is “revisiting a long list of small, non-strategic countries including Malta” and three other countries after “previous efforts to sell were hampered by a lack of buyers acceptable to local regulators”.

The RF MGS Index extended yesterday’s drop as it slipped by a further 0.26% to an over fourteen-month low of 1,104.739 points. All prices of Malta Government Stocks moved lower, especially at the higher end of the yield curve, amid a marked improvement across international financial markets fuelled by hopes of an early medical solution to COVID-19 as well as further signs of a pickup in economic activity across the world.