Index falls below 1,300-pt mark before blue chips recover

Stocks took a beating in early trading yesterday, breaking below the 1,300-point mark before steadily recovering as a handful of blue chip issues managed to close higher at the end of the trading session.

The composite index tempered its sharp decline since the start of the week to end just under six points or barely half a percent lower to 1,326.26 yesterday, their lowest close in two years.

Analysts conceded that the political scandal over jueteng that has dragged President Estrada into perhaps the biggest challenge of his political career continued to haunt the market.

The market closed mixed, with the commercial-industrial, oil and property sectors in the red but the finance and mining sectors gaining some ground.

There were also more advancers this time, at 18, but losing and unchanged stocks still dominated trading. A total of 54 issues closed lower and the remaining 40 were flat.

Value turnover reached P4.435 billion mainly as a result of two block sale transactions: Globe Telecom and Jollibee Foods. Without these block sales, only P453.78-million worth of deals changed hands yesterday.

Several Globe shareholders sold a combined 4.43 million shares priced at P875 each to Globe Telecom Holdings Inc., the newly-formed special purpose vehicle for the issuance of Philippine Deposit Receipt (PDRs).

Globe has started offering its PDRs, which would allow foreign investors to indirectly own shares of the telecom company, in both the international and domestic markets.

With the block sale and the end of the domestic PDR offering, the PSE lifted the suspension of trading for Globe’s common shares, warrants and preferred shares that was in effect since Oct. 6.

Meanwhile, JFC bought 2.755 million shares as a block at P19 per share as part of the company’s ongoing share repurchase program.

Among the few advancing stocks were San Miguel B, up 50 centavos to P47; Metrobank, up P1 to P167; Ayala Land, up five centavos to P4.15; Bank of Philippine Islands, up 50 centavos to P52.50; Aboitiz Equity Ventures, up two centavos to P1.22; Petron Corp. also up two centavos to P1.12; and Sun Life, up P5 to P930.