Shares tumble 7 points in lackluster trade

Share prices slackened yesterday after a mild rise last Friday as the overhang of the impeachment trial continued to cast a dry spell on the market.

The Phisix slid 6.65 points or 0.47 percent to 1,393.71 while the All-Shares Index lost 2.67 points or 0.36 percent to 744.20.

With most investors still tentative on the outcome of the closely-watched hearings at the Senate, there was hardly any action on the bourse as funds are still parked cautiously on the sidelines.

Trades were lean, save for some P460- million worth of MacroAsia Corp. shares which made up nearly 50 percent of the total P748.704-million turnover.

The airline catering and maintenance arm of the Lucio Tan group of companies, MacroAsia almost single-handedly carried the market as its price went up 15 centavos to P2.65, one of the top gainers for the day.

A far second on the most active list was PLDT, which cornered 13 percent of total transactions, giving up P5 to fall, along with other index stocks, to P795. The telecom giant cuts off the record date in availing of a P1.20 per share cash dividend today.

All sub-indices were down, except for the oil counter which was unchanged, as declining stocks beat out advances, 36 to 22, while 44 issues were steady.

Several blocks of MacroAsia were crossed yesterday by three affiliated brokerage houses also identified with the Tan group: Mandarin Securities, Luy’s Securities Co. and Triton Securities Corp.

The blocks combined for over 176 million shares or roughly 14 percent of MacroAsia’s total outstanding capital base of 1.26 billion shares.

There was no accompanying disclosure from MacroAsia on the purpose of the cross sales although there were market speculations these were in preparation for the backdoor listing of flag carrier Philippine Airlines thru Baguio Gold Holdings.

This pumped up the share price of Baguio Gold as well, leaping 40 percent or six centavos to finish as the second top gainer at P2.10.

Last May 26, Macro-Asia similarly crossed a huge block of its shares, worth P1.4 billion at P2.60 per share to account for over 66 percent of aggregate deals.

But this transaction was later questioned by the PSE’s Compliance and Surveillance Group (CSG) since over 50 percent of its outstanding shares were involved. Under the rules on beneficial ownership, the identities of groups or individuals holding at least 10 percent of a company’s outstanding stocks should be disclosed.