BOV share price at new 7-month low

Following last week’s 1.9% drop, the share price of Bank of Valletta plc eased a further 0.5% lower to close this morning’s session at a new 7-month low of €2.07 across twelve trades totalling 9,311 shares. The Bank is scheduled to pay the recently declared interim gross dividend of €0.06 per share on Thursday 24 May.

Similarly, HSBC Bank Malta plc shares continued to trade at the equity’s 2012 low of €2.50 on low volumes of 3,740 shares.

Meanwhile GO plc held on to last week’s 14.9% jump as the equity closed unchanged at its 10-week high of €0.85 after easing from an intra-day high of €0.86. A total of 27,867 shares changed hands today across eight trades. Despite the recent recovery from the equity’s all-time low of €0.70, GO’s share price is still 13.3% below its price at the beginning of the year.

The only other active equity during this morning’s session was Malta International Airport plc which closed unchanged at the €1.75 level on volumes of a mere 570 shares.

On the bond market, the Rizzo Farrugia MGS Index slid 0.2% lower to 989.111 points as Eurozone yields recovered from last Friday’s all-time low of 1.394% to the current 1.45% on some profit taking. Nonetheless, concerns over Greeks financial woes remain as this weekend’s summit of the eight largest economies (G8) failed to provide comfort to the markets as no concrete action and only a verbal support to Greece was declared. Moreover, Germany maintained its stance in favour of austerity measures in response to the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis.

This morning, Mediterranean Investments Holding plc announced that it will be convening a meeting for its bondholders in the 7.15% bonds maturing in 2017. During the meeting, the Company will ask bondholders to vote on a resolution that will allow it to use a portion of the outstanding bond proceeds to partly fund a reduction of a loan. The loan was taken out by MIH during the civil war in Libya in order to continue to honour payments to its capital creditors and other commitments. Further details available at https://rizzofarrugia.com/news-events/2012/bondholders-meeting-mih01/.