Share prices end mixed in lackluster trading

Share prices ended mixed in lackluster trading yesterday, with only the cross sale of nearly P3-billion worth of ABS-CBN’s common shares and PDRs late in the session perking up the market.

With the nationwide protest action and the landmark impeachment case against President Estrada in Congress gaining ground, investor euphoria, however, soon subsided as the political struggle has shifted to the pro-administration-led Senate, where the President’s impeachment faces an uncertain fate.

The Phisix closed practically flat, shedding just 0.38 point or 0.02 percent to 1,469.20 as the 96 traded stocks finished in different directions.

There were 33 advances as against 34 decliners and 29 unchanged issues yesterday. The sub-indices also moved in opposite routes with the commercial-industrial, oil and finance sectors going north while the mining and property counters dipping in the red.

The index struggled in negative terrain in early trading, falling almost 18 points, until the pick up in PLDT shares and the cross sale of a combined P2.9-billion worth of ABS-CBN’s common shares and Philippine Deposit Receipts (PDRs) helped lift the market from its sluggish state.

Value turnover amounted to P3.703 billion as nearly three-fourths of deals were cross sales of ABS-CBN, easily the most active stock for the day. Another four percent of transactions were similar cross sales of ABS-CBN Holdings, the corporate vehicle for the PDRs, which emerged as the second heaviest traded issues.

PCCI Securities and Brokers Corp. handled both cross sales – or transactions involving a single broker for the sale and purchase of a stock at market-determined prices. ABS shares went up 50 centavos to P51 while its PDRs remained at P50.

The PDR is an instrument which indirectly allows foreign investors to hold ABS-CBN shares, and therefore gives the media company a wider investor base. In October 1995, the company raised P1.4 billion from the sale of 30 million PDRs.

While some suspected the cross sales were part of the buying binge made by the government financial institutions (GFIs) such as SSS and GSIS into selected blue chips lie ABS-CBN, stock traders pointed out the transactions were mainly part of the conversion option from PDRs to common shares.

"Its like money going from one pocket to another," an analyst from a local stockbrokerage house said. "These deals could be confined to what the Lopezes already own."

He said there were also speculations of a buy-in by the First Pacific group, the controlling faction in telecom giant PLDT, wherein shares of ABS-CBN would be exchanged for PLDT to wrestle majority interest in BayanTel, the broadcast giant’s losing telecoms subsidiary.