Gaming firms becoming attractive

Even with the shortened trading week, there are still potential buys in the local bourse such as the stocks of gaming firms which, combined, posted the fastest earnings growth among other stocks in the market over the past months.

COL Financial Group, Inc. (COL) Head of Research April Lynn Tan said the gaming sector posted the fastest earnings growth — exactly a median growth of 33.1 percent — in the first half of the year, driven by the turnaround of gaming revenues.

COL then highlighted that during the period, Bloomberry Resorts Corp. and Melco Resorts and Entertainment (Philippines) Corporation both reported strong growth in gross gaming revenues (GGR) which resulted in stronger than expected first half earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) and net income.

In year-to-date terms, Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) remains to be the fastest growing index (+16.9 percent YTD in July) in ASEAN, breaking the 8,000 major resistance level on July 27.

"With the ghost month of August approaching, both DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average index) and PSEi show remarkable performance breaching the 22,000 and 8,000 resistance level, respectively. The PSEi will likely follow the movements of DJIA," First Metro Investment Corp. said in its latest Market Call Research.

"Moreover, it gained solid support between the 7,700 and 7,800 levels after the second quarter earnings results were better than expected. In any case, it would be best to wait for the PSEi correction before taking in more risks," it added.

The market will only trade for three days this week. There will be no trading today (Monday) in observance of National Heroes Day as well as on Friday for Eidul Adha.

On Friday, the local equities market went up as investors went bargain hunting ahead of the long day weekend and the Jackson Hole meeting.

The PSEi particularly increased by 10.21 points or 0.13 percent, closing at 8,015.14.