Market Report / Real estate rises, dollar falls to 10-year low
By Nathan Sheva
Israeli stocks finished yesterday mixed with a negative bias, though real estate rallied after taking a pounding the day before, and the shekel climbed strongly against the dollar.
Yesterday's session of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange session was marked by a rebound of real estate stocks.
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The U.S. dollar tumbled by 1.73% against the shekel to an official exchange rate of NIS 3.515 yesterday, dropping to its lowest point in more than 10 years. Gift Asset Management chief economist Eran Basson suggests that even an exchange rate of NIS 3.50 isn't the bottom. Maybe or maybe not, but what's sure is that the U.S. dollar has weakened by 8.6% since this year began. The last time the dollar traded that low was in December 1997. It may be hard to discern the trend on a day-to-day basis, but seen from the start of the year, it's impossible to miss.
Yet again the session ended early - at 2:15 P.M. instead of 5:30 P.M. - because of sanctions by TASE workers, but investors seem to have worked that out: Total turnover approached normal, reaching NIS 1.6 billion.
The TA-25 index edged down by 0.1% to 1,047 points and the TA-100 index lost 0.5% to 964 points. Altogether, the TA-100 index has lost 16% since the year began, returning the index to its level in March 2007. The Real Estate-15 index gained 1.5% and the MidCap-50 index and the MidCap-120 index each lost about 2%. But the leading indices were brought low chiefly by technology stocks, and the TelTech-15 index tumbled by 4%. From January 1, the tech index has lost 30%.
Among tech stocks, one of the hardest hit was VeriFone, which lost 6.7% after announcing another delay, to an unknown time, of its financial statements. Since its peak last year, VeriFone stock has lost 73% of its value, after disclosing mistakes in booking inventory of products in process, which inflated its closing inventory from November 2006 to July 2007. From the peak to the present, VeriFone has lost NIS 10.5 billion in value.
Moving on to real estate: This is a sad sector this year, but yesterday may have brought some carmine back to ashen investor cheeks. Africa Israel jumped by 4.5%, which is nice, but it is still 62% below its peak price of just 10 months ago. The company will be publishing its year 2007 financial statement on March 26.
Delek Real Estate gained 5.5% for no obvious reason, or at least, the company didn't mention any. In the last 12 months, this Yitzhak Tshuva vehicle has lost 70%.
Elbit Systems reported strong results for 2007 and was rewarded with a 2.2% gain in share price. The company said that fourth-quarter revenues had risen by 26% to $591 million, on which it netted $31.9 million, an increase of 33% against the same period of 2006.
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