A large inflow of cash supported the market. Sherine Abdel-Razek reports If anything, the week belonged to AMOC. The market began the week amid an overall positive sentiment following AMOC's oversubscribed IPO and Private placement and maintained its high tone throughout the week as AMOC started trading on Thursday. The private placement of 10 per cent of the company ended 34.8 times oversubscribed and resulted in a 2.9 per cent allocation. The fact that the allocation ratios in both AMOC's IPO -- 3.7 per cent -- and private placement were so low resulted in feverish demand for shares on its first day of trading. On Thursday alone AMOC's price skyrocketed by 65 per cent for LE86 compared to its offering price of LE45. With LE1.4 billion worth of its shares changing hands, AMOC alone cornered around 25 per cent of overall market transactions during the week. Senior officials in the stock exchange were quoted as saying that AMOC's offering attracted around 165,000 new investors to the market. The share maintained the buoyant performance during this week's early transactions to end at LE91 on Sunday. AMOC is the second oil sector company to be floated in the market within the last three months. It was preceded by Sidi Krir Petrochemicals SIDPEC which offered 20 per cent of its equity through an IPO and private placement on August. Both the ministries of petroleum and investments are currently working together to see the criteria for choosing offers to buy a further 60 per cent of SIDPEC. One of the main criteria would be the ability of the buyer to inject $2 billion worth of investments to upgrade the company's production facilities. Many foreign companies including British Petroleum, Chevron and Saudi SABIC have expressed their interest in the 60 per cent stake. SIDPEC recorded a new high through the week to close at LE123 compared to its offering price of LE76. The overall value of transactions was at LE4.7 billion, a relatively high value with an average weekly turnover of LE1.7 billion during the past four months. The 30 most actively traded stocks index CASE30 ended the week 4.6 per cent higher at 5,474 points. Such buoyant activity was also triggered by the large inflow of cash from both the sale of 100 per cent of Misr International Bank (MIBank) shares to National Société Générale Bank and Al-Ezz Group increasing its stake in National Alexandria and Steel ANSDK from 32.68 per cent to 34.44 per cent. Looking into the performance of individual shares, EFG Hermes maintained its top position on the list of most actively traded companies. Backed by news of its ambitious regional expansion plans the company hiked by 14.76 per cent to close at LE62.90. The construction sector fared well amid expectations of better economic growth rates for the local economy. Nasr City Housing and Development skyrocketed all through the week on the strength of rumours that it was considering a joint project with Emaar of the UAE coupled with optimistic fiscal year 2005 results. Nasr City ended the week with an impressive 71.67 per cent rise to close at LE88.48. The sector's star, Orascom Construction Industries (OCI), said it will expand its activities to Southeast Asia. OCI will invest $150 million to build a cement factory with an annual capacity of 2.5 million tonnes in Java, Indonesia. The telecommunications sector had a relatively quiet week with regards to transactions and price movements. However, Raya Holdings announced it was joining a consortium to bid for Egypt's third mobile network. Moreover, Raya Holding formed an alliance with British Telecom to obtain a licence to provide international communication services known as International Voice Gateway. MobiNil, Egypt's first mobile network operator, had good news for its investors. The company's number of subscribers exceeded six million in September versus 5.16 million subscribers recorded in June. The banking sector was in the limelight amid new developments in its overhaul plan. The cabinet decided last week to merge the state-owned Banque du Caire with Banque Misr. This was followed by an agreement with investment banks ING Barings and ABN Amro to restructure Banque Misr and the National Bank of Egypt respectively during the next three years. News at the macro-economic level was also good this week, a factor that helped the market even more. The IMF's Global Economic Outlook report noted that the local economy will grow by 4.8 per cent in 2005 and by five per cent in 2006. The report noted that Egypt's inflation rate is expected to reach 8.8 per cent in 2005, then drop to eight per cent in 2006. The privatisation programme is still a good source of news. Minister of Investment Mahmoud Mohieddin said in Washington that the government intends to sell its holdings in 92 out of the 170 state-owned companies during the current fiscal year. The Holding Company for Metallurgical Industries is currently undergoing the preliminary arrangement regarding the public offering of its 25 per cent-owned stake in Egyptian Financial and Industrial Company. It is also evaluating Misr Aluminum in an attempt to increase the free float of Misr Aluminum to 20 per cent by publicly offering an extra 12 per cent.
