Tasnee lifts Saudi stock market inches up

Saudi Arabia’s stock market rose on Thursday, lifted by petrochemical firm National Industrialization Company (Tasnee), while Dubai was driven lower by its top bank.

Saudi Arabia’s index inched up 0.1 percent with Tasnee climbing 5.3 percent, to its highest since August 2018, and Al Rajhi Bank was up 0.1 percent.

Tasnee said that its unit Cristal completed the sale of its titanium dioxide business to Tronox Holdings. Cristal will receive a cash consideration of $1.673 billion and a 24 percent equity in Tronox.

Development Works Food added 3.4 percent after its board proposed to increase capital to 25 million riyals from 12.5 million riyals through the issuance of bonus shares.

The Dubai index slid 0.5 percent, with Emirates NBD shedding 1.7 percent and Mashreq Bank declining 6.8 percent.

On Wednesday, Emirates announced the sale of 127.5 million shares in Network International for a total of 554.5 million pounds ($725.73 million) through a secondary listing of the shares on the London Stock Exchange.

The Abu Dhabi index was flat, with National Bank of Umm Al Qaiwain rising 4.4 percent and Abu Dhabi Ship Building increasing 3 percent.

But International Holding slumped 7.7 percent. Its shareholders approved the entry of PAL Group of Companies and PAL Technology Services as shareholders and the increase of share capital to 1.82 billion dirhams from 510 million dirhams.

The company acquired PAL Cooling in January.

Qatar’s stock market added 0.3 percent with Qatar Islamic Bank, rising 3.1 percent, to its highest level in over a decade.

Ooredoo gained 0.5 percent. In March, its shareholders approved the splitting of the nominal value of shares to be 1 riyal instead of 10 riyals ($2.75) .

The Qatar Financial Markets Authority has now said that all listed companies will split the nominal value of the shares to become 1 riyal.

Source: Reuters