JEDDAH, 8 March 2006 -- The huge profits and earnings that Saudi companies announced this week helped partially to lift the market on Sunday and Monday. However, they failed to lift the Saudi Stock Market (Tadawul) yesterday as the market closed with all the indexes in the red and only four companies gaining.

The market showed a continuation of the past two days recovery in yesterday's morning session as the Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) closed slightly higher from Monday at 18,965.54. In the evening, nevertheless, the market unexpectedly showed negative performance as TASI lost 698.91 points or 3.71 percent to close at 18,139.96.

In the first 15 minutes after its opening in the morning, the market went under a fierce attack from speculators and it dipped near to 18,731. The market recovered afterward and the morning session closed with the Banking, Cement, Services and Electrical indexes edging higher while the rest edging lower.

The Electrical Index was the only index in the morning session to come close to the five-percent maximum fluctuation band. The index gained 4.74 percent to 4,061.31 in the morning. The Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) shares were the most traded in the morning as 7,573,525 shares exchanged hands yesterday. The report of the SEC's net profit of SR1.48 billion in 2005 and its Sunday announcement of distributing SR547 million to its shareholders made the shares lucrative for the investors.

In the evening, the Electrical Index lost by an identical margin of 4.74 percent closing at 3,693.95 lower than the pervious day when it closed at 3,877.63. The SEC shares were still the most traded yesterday as 17,636,155 shares were exchanged in the evening session; however, this time it was under speculative pressure, which droved the share prices to SR181 from SR199 in the morning.

The Cement Index fell 4.33 percent in the evening to 11,405.39 after it hit 12,035.37 in the morning. The share of all the cement companies edged lower in yesterday's trading.

The Industrial Index was the most affected yesterday as it lost 2,175.77 points or 4.91 percent to close at 42,115.67 with the shares of all the industrial companies falling.

Saudi Chemical Company reported yesterday that its 2005 sales rose 23 percent to SR954 million from SR774 million in 2004. The company also reported a net profit of SR110 million in 2005. Despite the announcement, the company's shares fell 4.94 percent to SR423 yesterday.

In the banking sector, the shares of two banks, Samba Financial Group and Arab National Bank, rose in yesterday's trading while the prices of all other shares in the sector fell. The Banking Index declined 729.05 points or 1.55 percent to 44,291.44.

In the services sector, the shares of the Al-Mawashi Al-Mukairish United Co. (Saudi Livestock) were the second most active by volume yesterday following the SEC shares. The company reported SR36 million in net losses for 2005 after its losses narrowed by SR8.6 million or 19 percent from 2004. The mounting speculation on the company's shares in the morning propelled their prices forward to SR258. In the evening, strong speculation on the shares pressured their prices 4.69 percent down to SR244.

The Services Index lost 235.24 points or 3.34 percent to 6,813.62 yesterday. While the shares of all the services companies incurred losses, the shares of Taiba Investment and SASCO were the only gainers yesterday.

By Wael Mahdi

© Arab News 2006