KARACHI: The two sessions of trading at the stock market on Friday, the last day of the week saw lacklustre activity with stocks moving in a narrow band on yet another day of low turnover.

The KSE-100 index was down 66.39 points to 22,085.96. Investors kept to the sidelines with little interest witnessed in trading, represented by extremely low volume at 105 million shares of the trading value of Rs3.6 billion.

Lack of triggers kept the activity dull. News about privatisation of PIA and four other state-owned enterprises (SoEs) triggered massive buying interest in PIA shares during the early hours of the day.

Nishat (Chunian) Power Limited and Nishat (Chunian) announced results on Friday. NCPL announced earnings per share (eps) at Rs7.45.

Directors also declared cash dividend at Rs2 per share (20 per cent). NCL posted eps at Rs12.51 along with dividend at Rs2 and bonus shares at 10 per cent. Both stocks caught some investor interest with trading seen in 5.5 million and 6.3 million shares, respectively.

Other than that, the news of decision to review the power tariff as announced by the government further dampened investor sentiments as they feared piling up of circular debt.

As such PSO remained under pressure the whole day and closed down 2 per cent.

Other oil stocks also remained under pressure for the same reason. Besides the two stocks NCL and NCPL that announced results on Friday, POL and Hubco were also some of the few liquid stocks that closed higher. POL ended with gain of 0.2pc and Hubco closed up 1pc.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corporation said that the stocks closed lower amid thin trade at KSE on concerns over economic uncertainty.

Trade remained mainly in second and third tier stocks.

Uncertainty over outcome of Supreme Court warnings to government on raise in power tariff, limited foreign interest, and lower global commodities played a catalyst role in bearish sentiments despite speculations ahead of expected sale of SoEs.

On technical charts, analyst Qasim Anwar at AKD Securities said that pullback could be expected to terminate as index approaches 22,320 — 22,525 resistance zone. The technical analyst maintained a bearish outlook below 22,857 level sighting possibilities for near-term weakness towards 21,451 — 21,416 and 20,924 levels.

Dealer Samar Iqbal at Topline Securities admitted that activity was sluggish at the market.

Most of the activity remained concentrated towards low priced stocks like Pak Electron (Right shares) and Telecard.

PSO fell sharply after government announced that they have taken back the increase in power rate as investors feared that it would affect the cash flows of the company. Better than expected dividend announcement by NCPL helped the share price hitting the upper limit.

In all, 307 stocks were traded on Friday with the losers at 169 ahead of the gainers at 114.

Market capitalisation decreased by Rs15 billion to Rs5.240 trillion.

On the 10-top traded list, Pak Elektron (R) posted the highest volume of 9m shares, the stock down by 75 paisa to Rs 5.01.

Telecard Limited with turnover of 9m shares was up 3 paisa to Rs6.10; Nishat (Chunian) was down 52 paisa to Rs58.85 on 6m shares; TRG Pakistan was lower by 21 paisa to Rs9.89 on 6m shares; NishatChunPower was up 75 paisa to Rs37.07 on 6m shares; Media Times Limited rose 15 paisa to Rs3.19 on 6m shares; Bank of Punjab was down 8 paisa to Rs10.99 on 4m shares; PTCL was up 2 paisa to Rs26.47 on 3m shares; Fauji Cement slipped 13 paisa to Rs10.95 on 2m shares and Netsol Technologies was up 20 paisa to Rs43.41 on 2m shares.