The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index, which opened at 510.88 points on Sunday, made a moderate gain of 1.74 points, or 0.34 percent, to close at 512.62 points on Thursday -- the last trading day of the week.[break]
The hike came on the back of gains posted by most of the bank stocks, which lifted banking sub-index to 496.29 points on Thursday from 491.48 points recorded on Sunday morning.
“Demand for bank stocks have gone up lately as second quarter financial results published by most of the banks show increment in profit level,” Stockbroker Anjan Poudel said.
Nepse´s weekly report shows that share prices of all top banks, except Standard Chartered (StanChart) Bank Nepal, posted gains over the week. Shares of StanChart shed Rs 31 over the week to close at Rs 1,939 on Thursday. With the fall in price, Nabil Bank - which saw its share value rise by Rs 26 to Rs 1,606 over the week - replaced StanChart as the top commercial bank in the country in terms of market capitalization.
As of Nepse´s closing time on Thursday, Nabil Bank recorded market capitalization of Rs 32.59 billion as against StanChart´s Rs 31.22 billion.
Other big banks in terms of market capitalization also saw value of their shares perk up over the week, with shares of Everest Bank posting a gain of Rs 16 to Rs 1,371 and Nepal Investment Bank reporting Rs 6 increment in its shares to Rs 760.
Shares of Himalayan Bank also got a boost of Rs 4 over the week to end at Rs 760 on Thursday, while stocks of Nepal Bangladesh Bank gained a whopping Rs 47 over the week to close at Rs 279 on reports that Bangladeshi promoter of the financial institution is acquiring shares belonging to NB Group and Bangladesh-based Bank Asia.
Over the week, shares of Nepal Telecom, which contributes to almost 25 percent of the total market capitalization, also got a lift of Rs 2 to Rs 652, which pushed up ´others´ sub-index to 766 points by Thursday from 763.65 points of Sunday. Shares of Nepal Life Insurance Company also gained Rs 44 over the week to close at Rs 1,665 on Thursday. This pushed insurance sub-index to 817.28 points by the time the market closed for the week from 815.24 points recorded on Sunday.
“Overall, the market response looked positive this week, but the performance could have been much better had there been improvement in political situation,” Poudel said.
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