The MSE Equity Price Index advanced by a further 0.79% to 3,788.292 points as the gains in HSBC, BOV and GO outweighed the drops in Mapfre Middlesea, MaltaPost and the RS2 preference shares. Meanwhile, four companies closed unchanged as overall trading activity in equities surged to a three-week high of €0.25 million.
Malta International Airport plc was the most actively traded equity today as it stayed at its one-year low of €5.65 on a total of 21,556 shares having a market value of €0.12 million.
Also among the large companies by market value, International Hotel Investments plc held on to the €0.57 level across 11,991 shares.
BMIT Technologies plc (68,650 shares) and Malta Properties Company plc (48,600 shares) also ended the day flat at €0.48 and €0.53 respectively.
The best performing equity today was HSBC Bank Malta plc as it rallied by 3.6% to regain the €0.87 level across 22,256 shares. On Thursday, HSBC announced that it entered into a 10-year unsecured €60 million loan agreement with HSBC Bank plc to enable the bank meet the interim targets for minimum requirement for own funds and eligible liabilities (‘MREL’) as set by the Single Resolution Board. The loan has an option of early repayment and bears interest at a rate equal to 3-months EURIBOR plus a margin of 117 basis point which currently results in an effective rate of around 0.6%.
A single deal of just 2,000 shares lifted equity of Bank of Valletta plc 2.9% higher to the €0.88 level.
GO plc also trended in positive territory with an uplift of 2.5% to the €3.34 level on negligible volumes.
Meanwhile, the preference shares of RS2 Software plc moved to a new all-time low of €1.65 (-2.9%) across 2,000 shares.
MaltaPost plc lost 1.7% to the €1.18 level across 20,000. The company is due to publish its full-year results on Monday 20 December.
Mapfre Middlesea plc eased by 0.9% to the €2.185 level after partially recovering from an intra-day low of €2.06 (-6.4%). A total of 6,242 shares traded.
The RF MGS Index continued to drift lower as it eased by a further 0.05% to 1,093.680 points. Yesterday, the US Federal Reserve announced that it will accelerate the pace of reduction of its monthly bond purchases amid a spike in inflation. The central bank also indicated that it might hike interest rates three times in 2022.
Elsewhere, the European Central Bank decided that it will discontinue its net asset purchases under the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme at the end of March 2022.
On the other hand, the central bank decided to leave its key interest rate unchanged at a record low and that from October 2022 onwards, net asset purchases under the Asset Purchase Programme will be maintained at €20 billion per month “for as long as necessary to reinforce the accommodative impact of its policy rates”.
The ECB reiterated that interest rates will “remain at their present or lower levels until it sees inflation reaching 2% well ahead of the end of its projection horizon and durably for the rest of the projection horizon, and it judges that realised progress in underlying inflation is sufficiently advanced to be consistent with inflation stabilising at 2% over the medium term”.
In contrast, today the Bank of England unexpectedly raised its main interest rate to 0.25% from 0.1%.