KARACHI: Shares closed slightly down on Tuesday in a range-bound session despite a decline in international oil prices.

Topline Securities said the investors’ interest stayed concentrated within the exploration and production sector where Pakistan Petroleum Ltd and Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd closed higher. That was because the former told a briefing of analysts that its block in Abu Dhabi has several known discoveries and that the company expects to drill the first well next year.

According to Arif Habib Ltd, the index opened in the red zone on account of political uncertainty. But investors jumped back into action later in the day and pulled the benchmark into the green territory. Profit-taking commenced in the final hour of trading and caused the index to close in red.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 42,796.85 points, down 53.98 points or 0.13 per cent from the preceding session.

The trading volume increased 1.7pc to 188.7 million shares while the traded value went up 23pc to $33.4m on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Lotte Chemical Pakistan Ltd (17.8m shares), WorldCall Telecom Ltd (14.3m shares), TRG Pakistan Ltd (12.4m shares), Unity Foods Ltd (10.7m shares) and TPL Properties Ltd (10.3m shares).

Sectors that contributed negatively to the index performance were technology and communication (58.6 points), miscellaneous (24.6 points), power generation and distribution (16.8 points), cement (16 points) and vanaspati and allied industries (10.1 points).

Companies registering the biggest increase in their share prices in absolute terms were the Thal Industries Corporation Ltd (Rs14.99), Shield Corporation Ltd (Rs10), Packages Ltd (Rs9), Murree Brewery Company Ltd (Rs8.36) and Indus Motor Company Ltd (Rs7.79).

Shares that declined the most in rupee terms were Sapphire Fibres Ltd (Rs90), Sanofi-Aventis Pakistan Ltd (Rs80), Pakistan Services Ltd (Rs44.67), Philip Morris Pakistan Ltd (Rs38.63) and Faisal Spinning Mills Ltd (Rs19).

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2022