CAIRO: Egypt s two main stock indexes ended flat on Thursday as real estate firm Talaat Moustafa rebounded, but Orascom Telecom dipped after second-quarter results that missed expectations. Talaat Moustafa gained 11.6 percent in volatile trade as investors digested news that former chairman Hisham Talaat Moustafa had been charged in a murder case. Investors flocked back to the stock after the company said it had replaced its chairman and would meet all its project obligations on time. The shares ended at LE 6.54 ($1.21). People are realizing that the stock is very much undervalued, said Karim Hosny, trader at Pharos Securities. I don t expect it to fall below LE 6. He said investors from Saudi Arabia and retail traders in Egypt were buying the stock, which had plunged 16 percent on Tuesday but gained 4.5 percent on Wednesday. The benchmark CASE 30 index closed flat at 8,400.86 points, while the well-watched Hermes index lost 0.28 percent to 728.98 points and the broader CIBC index gained 0.28 percent to 404.83 points. It was a mixed market today, talking about the big contributors, said Mohamed Kotb, investment manager at Jazira Asset Management. Market heavyweight Orascom Telecom lost 1.65 percent as investors dropped the shares after the firm reported second quarter net income of $80.8 million, a 64 percent drop on the previous quarter. Commercial International Bank also slipped, losing 2.27 percent. But fellow heavyweights Orascom Construction Industries and investment bank EFG-Hermes both added over 2 percent.
