Weak start for Bursa as Tenaga weighs on KLCI

KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips slumped in early Monday trade, weighed down by declines in Tenaga Nasional and Axiata, as Bursa trailed the more positive key Asian markets.

At 9.30am, the FBM KLCI was down 3.47 points or 0.22% to 1,564.97. Turnover was 413.26 million shares valued at RM152.07mil. There were 263 gainers, 178 losers and 253 counters unchanged.

Asian stocks kicked off the week with modest gains after US equities rallied Friday on better-than-expected jobs data, Bloomberg reported.

Equity benchmarks opened higher in Tokyo, Sydney and Seoul. Gains were modest with the key Dec 15 US-China tariff deadline looming with no specific plan for a trade deal.

At Bursa, for the past week foreign funds were net sellers at RM834.6mil while local institutions were net buyers at RM758.9mil and local retail investors at RM75.7mil.

Last Friday, foreign funds were net sellers at RM80.4mil while local institutions were net buyers at RM71.2mil and local retail investors at RM9.1mil.

Tenaga fell 12 sen to RM13.30 with 77,100 shares done. PublicInvest Research has upgraded the power giant to Neutral (previously Trading Sell) with an unchanged target price of RM14.12.

Axiata shed five sen to RM4.16 in thin trade.

NPC and Ajinomoto lost 10 sen each to RM1.80 and RM15.10 while Favelle favco was down nine sen to RM2.88 and IGBB seven sen to RM3.65.

Down eight sen each were Heineken, Magnum and Takaful to RM26.02, RM2.59 and RM5.77 respectively.

However, plantations fared better, underpinned by the rally in crude palm oil prices. KL Kepong added 34 sen to RM24.50, United Plantations 22 sen to zrm26.32, Batu Kawan 14 senn to RM15.98 and Hap Seng Plantations eight sen to RM1.89.

Petronas Dagangan added16 sen to RM22.50, Revenue Group nine sen to RM2.17 and Allianz eight sen to RM14.70.

Source: TheStar