Tadawul surges 1.4% in moderate turnover

13/02/2015 07:49 AST

Second-tier stocks boosted Saudi Arabia's bourse on Thursday as oil prices rebounded from an overnight tumble, but other Gulf markets were narrowly mixed. Egypt's stock index fell but ended well off its lows.

Brent oil slid about 3 percent to below $54 a barrel on Wednesday but by the time the Saudi market closed on Thursday it had rebounded to above $56, heartening investors who have been taking the oil price as their main cue in recent months.

The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) ended 1.4 percent higher at 9,257 points in moderate turnover. Construction firm Jabal Omar jumped 9.7 percent after swinging to a quarterly profit of SR149.3 million ($39.8 million) from a loss of SR2.5 million a year earlier.

Tabuk Agricultural Development gained 6.2 percent, and Axa Cooperative Insurance soared 9.8 percent.

Among blue chips, Saudi Electricity Co. rose 2.4 percent. It has gained sharply in the last few days after Saudi Arabia's central bank governor called for reforms to the country's system of energy and water subsidies; higher electricity tariffs could benefit the company's bottom line, though the governor gave no indication that the government actually planned concrete action. Saudi Hollandi Bank climbed 1.5 percent after it proposed increasing its capital by 20 percent through a bonus share issue to fund business activities and growth, becoming the latest in a string of Saudi banks to announce capital increases.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, Dubai's index edged down 0.1 percent to 3,903 points while Abu Dhabi inched up 0.03 percent to 4,627 points.

Dubai real estate blue chip Emaar Properties gained 0.6 percent. Abu Dhabi's Aldar Properties edged up 0.4 percent after it posted an estimate-beating 61 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit. It also proposed a dividend of 0.09 dirhams per share for 2014, up from 0.07 dirhams for 2013.

United Arab Emirates telecommunications operator Etisalat rose 0.9 percent after Egypt's communications minister said his government would issue landline licences to participating mobile operators within weeks. This could be a boost for Etisalat's majority-owned Egyptian mobile unit Etisalat Misr.

Qatar's index fell 0.6 percent to 12,608 points, dragged down by a 4.4 percent pull-back by Ezdan Holding, which had surged 21 percent in the previous week.

The Egyptian index closed 0.2 percent lower at 9,747 points, after dropping on Wednesday below technical support on the early February low at 9,780, indicating a short-term pull-back from near multi-year highs. But it finished well of the day's low of 9,656 points.

Major property firm Talaat Moustafa slipped 0.7 percent after a string of announcements in recent days on a board member or members selling shares near the stock's recent highs.

Reuters