Market Report / TTA-25 drops 1.3% as companies report in
By Tal Levy
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange ended its first trading day this week with sizable losses: The TA-25 fell 1.3% to 1,087 points and the TA-100 was down 1.4% to close the day at 1,008 points. Turnover was a low NIS 1.2 billion.
It appears that investors on Ahad Ha'am are waiting for the decision tomorrow of the governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, on June interest rates. In addition there was the normal low trading volume seen on Sundays with foreign investors off. In fact, it is a long weekend for many, as Wall Street will be closed today as well for the U.S. Memorial Day holiday.
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Makhteshim Agan was down 2%, after it was revealed the company was an investment target of Schroders, which reached a 5.4% holding worth NIS 750 million in Makhteshim last week and became a party of interest.
Teva was off 1.7% and Israel Chemicals lost 0.2%. Israel Chemicals is expected to publish its first-quarter financial results tomorrow. Harel analysts predicted a 148% jump in net profits to $276 million.
Ormat rose 1.5% and thus stood out, bucking the losing trend yesterday after its biggest competitor, Calpine, received a buyout offer valued at $10.7 billion. Calpine ran into troubles two and a half years ago, and even asked for court protection. All told, Calpine has electrical generating capacity of 23,800 megawatts - 125% greater than that of the Israel Electric Corporation.
The Real Estate-15 fell 3% for the day. Africa Israel Residence was off 4.8% after reporting its poor first-quarter results. Its parent, Africa Israel, lost 2.9%.
The Banks-5 was down 1.8%. Bank Leumi was off 1.6% and Bank Hapoalim lost 2.4%. The banks are expected to announce their first-quarter results later this week. In particular the market is waiting nervously for Hapoalim, which will have to inform investors of how much money it put aside to cover the losses in its subprime security portfolio, which it sold off last week.
Clal Insurance was down 2.3%. The firm, from the IDB group, reported a NIS 17.1-million loss for the first quarter of 2008, compared to a NIS 329.9 million profit in the same quarter of last year. It reported that the poor results came from a combination of higher financing costs and lower investment income.
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