SHARES continued a slippery slope yesterday, weighed down by weak banking stocks as the saga on Bank of Cyprus’s listing in Athens rumbled on.
A sour mood from a liquidity crunch and rumours putting a dampener on scenarios for an early BoC listing in Athens knocked seven points off the all-share CSE index yesterday, pulling it down to 485.03.
The market opened weaker and continued on a downtrend for the majority of the session, with buyers emerging literally the last two minutes of trading, drawn by lower prices.
"The market is in a downturn cycle and to a great extent still in the hands of speculators. Institutionals are not around," said Cisco’s Stavros Agrotis.
Traded values were up slightly on Wednesday at £35.7 million and on 22.4 million shares traded.
However, traders said that the booming primary market was continuing to absorb liquidity from the secondary market, even though a recent downturn had made it more appealing to remain on the bourse.
"The primary market was attractive for many months but now many companies in the secondary market have better PE ratios than those who are on their way in," one analyst said.
All sectors with the exception of fast-moving investment shares ended south.
The heavyweight banking sector, which has a strong impact in the calculation of the all-share index, lost 1.26 per cent.
The weakness in banks was led by BoC, which was down 14 cents to £7.64.
Traders said sentiment was jarred by persistent rumours of possible delays in BoC’s parallel listing of shares on the Athens bourse, and speculation about its listing price.
However, some suggested that it could simply be fatigue.
"The BoC issue started 18 months ago and this prolonged period has created doubts in some investors’ minds if there are problems with the listing or not," trader Omiros Nisiotis told the CyBC.
Publicly, the bank has recently distanced itself from making projections of when it would list its shares in Athens after earlier predictions of its ASE entry first in January, then March and then June never transpired.
Bank of Cyprus plans to list 39 million shares on the Greek stock market, with the strike price calculated through book-building.
When the bank took its decision to list in Greece, the ASE was riding a wave of euphoria similar to the one that grabbed the Cyprus bourse last year. But a correction on a liquidity crunch and muted buying interest has curtailed equity demand.
That climate has drawn widespread speculation on the prices the Greeks would be willing to pay for BoC stock, and in some cases it is lower than the currently quoted price on the Cyprus market.
"All this is speculation and totally unserious. Nobody knows at what price Bank of Cyprus will list because the price will be determined through book building," said Agrotis.
Elsewhere on the market, Aiantas dominated turnover with 4.15 million shares changing hands, jumping three cents to 41.3 while Kyknos was second in terms of turnover with 2.3 million shares changing hands.
It climbed three cents to a close of 85. Yesterday associate firm White Knight announced that Kyknos shareholders would be eligible for its shares at a ratio of one White Knight share for every five Kyknos shares held.
On 111 issues traded, 69 dropped, 29 rose and 13 were unchanged. There were 9,010 transactions.
