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Amman Stock Exchange

AMMAN - The general index of the Amman Stock Exhange (ASE) edged up last week as many companies released positive third quarter results. The index closed Thursday at 6,724.99 points, an increase of 0.17 per cent. Market capitalisation increased to JD25.95 billion, up by 0.24 per cent.

The industrial sector index was the only index to record gains last week increasing by 2.02 per cent. The diversified financial and real estate sectors were the biggest losers as their indices fell by 1.97 per cent and 0.98 per cent respectively.

As for trading activity, 121.611 million shares exchanged hands, while the average daily trading value declined by 38.2 per cent to JD57.72 million. Overall, decliners outnumbered advancers as 95 companies out of 186 declined, while 80 advanced.

In terms of value traded by sector, both the diversified financial services and the real estate sectors came in first place, each accounting for 25.2 per cent of the total value traded, followed by the banking sector which accounted for 17.7 per cent.

The most actively traded shares last week were United Arab Investors, Al Tajamouat for Catering and Housing and Union Investment Corporation with a combined value traded of JD64.381 million accounting for 22.3 per cent of the week's total value traded.

Several block deals were executed, most significant were deals on shares of Jordan Commercial Bank , United Arab Investors, and Investors and Eastern Arab for Industrial and Real Estate Investments with transaction values of JD3.83million, JD2.93 million and JD1.45 million respectively.

According to the Department of Statistics (DoS) the general industrial price index for the first nine months of 2007increased by 8.3 per cent compared with the same period of 2006 noting that the percentage for the first eight months of 2007 was 8.5 per cent as compared with the first eight months of 2006.

The increase of the price index for the first nine months of this year has resulted from the increase of the manufacturing industries' prices by 8.3 per cent with a relative importance of 82.5 per cent.

The DoS expected continuous slowdown of the annual increase in producers' prices in the coming months because the impact of the fuel price rise which occurred in the second quarter of the previous year will appear in the comparison years 2006 and 2007.

Arab Bank Group reported $753.4 million in net profit at the end of the third quarter of 2007, representing a growth of 13.6 per cent. The bank's total assets grew to $37.2 billion. The share price closed at JD26.51 down by 1.85 per cent while trading at a forward P/E multiple of 17.63x.

The Housing Bank for Trade and Finance reported net pretax profit of JD112.51 at the end of the third quarter, a rise of 12 per cent compared to the same period last year. The share price went down by 0.58 per cent closing at JD6.8.

Net profit shot up by 362.9 per cent in the third quarter of this year for the Arab Potash Company to reach JD133.2 million, compared to JD36.7 million during the same period last year. The company's share price closed at JD22.1 up by 13.04 per cent.

Jordan Cement Company announced a drop in profits by 16 per cent to JD42 million in the third quarter of this year compared to JD50 million to the same period in 2006. The share price dropped by 0.44 per cent to close at JD11.35.

Jordan Telecom Group achieved 6 per cent growth in net profit reaching JD72.5 million in the third quarter of this year, compared to JD68.4 million in the same period of 2006.The company's share price ended the week at JD4.7 up by 1.08 per cent.

© Jordan Times 2007