Ayala Land edges lower on lockdown, MSCI rebalancing

AYALA Land, Inc. (ALI) dipped last week after the rebalancing of the MSCI index and news of extended lockdowns, but analysts say the stock remains attractive to market players.

The property firm was the sixth most actively traded stock last week with a total of 41.17 million shares worth P1.38 billion traded from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3, data from the Philippine Stock Exchange showed.

Week on week, ALI shares inched down by 1.2% to P33.10 apiece on Friday from its Aug. 27 closing price of P33.50. Compared with the first trading day of the year, the stock’s price fell by 21.2%.

“ALI’s share price movement this week was mostly attributable to the MSCI rebalancing which took effect last Sept. 1,” Regina Capital Development Corp. Equity Analyst Anna Corenne M. Agravio said in an e-mail interview.

ALI was among other blue-chip stocks dragged by the rebalancing, which prompted the “outflow of passive funds and an inevitable downturn in share prices,” she said.

“Nonetheless, this meant that the downturn was not born out of fundamental reasons,” Ms. Agravio added.

The Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Index is designed to measure the performance of the large and mid-cap segments of a local market. The index is reviewed quarterly — in February, May, August, and November — to reflect change in the underlying equity markets in a timely manner, while limiting undue index turnover.

Some fund managers track the MSCI index composition to realign their portfolios. The MSCI Philippines Index is composed of 17 constituents, covering 85% of the country’s equity universe.

As of Sept. 3, ALI has an index weight of 10.49%, second only to SM Prime Holdings, Inc.’s 13.66%. —