Egyptian shares slipped on Thursday in spite of some strong nine-month results released in the past 10 days and some heavy buying by foreigners. Brokers said local retail investors were now in the mood to sell after recent rises in small-cap stocks, which they favor. People are negative about the market and want to get out ... The results were very disappointing from Telecom Egypt because people had very high expectations, said Mohamed Radwan of Delta Securities. Telecom Egypt, partially privatized a year ago, said its net profits fell 17.2 percent to LE 1.52 billion ($265 million) in the January-September period because of some distorting factors in the two comparable nine-month periods. Yasser Hassanein of Dynamic Securities said many investors looked at the bottom line without going into details. Telecom Egypt shares fell 3 percent to last trade at LE 15.05. Companies that reported large profit growth were not exempt from the bearish mood. Orascom Construction Industries, which raised net profit 58 percent, has hardly moved since announcing the results on Tuesday. Oriental Weavers Carpet Co., which reported a 49 percent increase in net profit on Thursday, shed 0.6 percent to end the session at LE 80.51. Stock exchange statistics showed that non-Arab foreigners were net buyers by a margin of LE 948 million, while Egyptians were net sellers by about the same amount. But much of the volume, more than half of the day s total, came from the sale of 90.8 million shares in Assiut Cement at LE 10 a share, brokers said. They could not identify the buyer and seller but the largest shareholder in the company is the Mexican company Cemex.
