High trading activity in the equity market

High trading activity on the local equity market during this morning’s session with a total of €574,000 worth of trades effected across the 10 active equities today with particularly high volumes in FIMBank plc and International Hotel Investments plc.

366,000 FIMBank shares exchanged today across ten trades. The share price of the trade finance specialist closed unchanged at the US$0.95 level after recovering from an intra-day low of US$0.95.

Likewise, IHI’s share price recovers from a low of €0.85 to close unchanged at the €0.88 level on activity amounting to 140,000 shares. IHI ranks as the best performer of the week with a gain of 18.9% as the market reacted positively to last Friday’s announcement that the IHI Group is currently undertaking a private placement of new shares at a price above the €1.00 level.

In the banking sector, the share prices of Bank of Valletta plc and HSBC Bank Malta plc continued to recover helping the MSE Share Index to edge 0.6% higher to 3,642.133 points. Index gains 2.4% during the penultimate trading week of the year. Meanwhile the Rizzo Farrugia MGS Index gains 0.15% today to 992.68 points.

Despite the gains registered during the final two days of this shortened week, BOV ended the week 2.9% lower at the €3.70 level but highest bids are already placed above the closing price. On the other hand HSBC closes the week unchanged at the €3.10 level.

RS2 Software plc this morning issued a press release announcing that the new 3-year comprehensive package agreement in Germany referred to in the latest Interim Directors’ Statement was signed with the German payment service provider, KPS Payment GmbH und Co. KG. The share price of RS2 Software initially opened at a new low of €0.45 today before covering to close the day unchanged at the €0.48 level on high volumes of 60,000 shares.

No trading session will be held tomorrow and the Malta Stock Exchange will open again for business on Monday 27 December. A Happy Christmas to all our readers.