BCEL continues to lead the way
With the wind out of the sails it was very much an uneventful day yesterday with volumes lacking, but turnover for the fourth straight day exceeded the US$100K mark. The last four trading days have seen a rise then a fall in succession and now very much a perfect “M” shape, but this week's turnover excluding today is already 110 percent in excess of last week's.
BCEL has value written all over the stock and interest continued early yesterday with 12K + 3.5K shares being gobbled up in the first two sessions. But volumes went lacking until the last session with a surge of BCEL stock. EDL-Gen gained 50 kip in the 5th session but on low volumes.
BCEL volumes for December have really fired up December's market liquidity with 72 percent of the market volumes. The banking stocks dominance (as at Wednesday) reveals its turnover was 82 percent of the market turnover. BCEL had turned over US$1.3 million for December or US$92,909 per day versus EDL-Gen's US$286.5 thousand or US$20.5 thousand per day. Yesterday BCEL also dominated with 70 percent of LSX turnover.
BCEL's upcoming dividend (which will almost certainly be better than bank interest) could have sparked renewed interest, but it's more likely to be from a 52 percent “profit takes” at 7,600 versus the original IPO price of 5,000 kip.
A price rally of 200 to 400 kip for BCEL would be the norm in other markets but it's proving to be a cat and mouse game at the LSX for stocks. As the market matures (2 to 5 years) daily trading will become more predictable, but to date in 2011 the LSX share trades have been anything but predictable. Company reports and price sensitive information have to date been widely ignored by foreigners, reinforcing our view that both stocks (long term) are substantially undervalued.
vientiane times
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