Arabtec buoys Dubai stocks as Gulf markets fall

dubai — Dubai stocks erased declines, with Arabtec Holding Company advancing the most in four weeks as some investors bet the worst may be over for the construction company after it posted its first-ever yearly loss.

About half of Dubai’s stocks rose, with Arabtec climbing 8.3 per cent as traders exchanged 97 million shares, more than a quarter of the DFM General Index’s total volume. The gauge fell 0.3 per cent before closing little changed.

Arabtec, the biggest publicly traded construction company in the UAE, on Sunday posted a net loss of Dh2.35 billion for 2015, compared with a profit of Dh214.6 million in the previous year.

Qatar’s QE Index slid 0.6 per cent and Kuwait’s SE Price Index dropped 0.2 per cent. Oman’s MSM30 Index and the Bahrain Bourse All Share Index both slid 0.1 per cent.

The Tadawul All Share Index in Saudi Arabia slipped 0.2 per cent. Saudi Basic Industries Corporation, the biggest contributor to the drop, lost one per cent, ending a five-day winning streak.

“The correlation is still strong between the Saudi stock market’s performance and oil prices,” said Mohammed Alsuwayed, the Riyadh-based head of capital and money markets at Adeem Capital. Investors are “cautiously optimistic about policy change in oil strategy after news of talks among oil producers recently, which would lift pressure on the market for some time,” he said.

Egypt’s EGX 30 Index climbed one per cent. Companies making up the gauge are trading at an average of 6.1 times their estimated earnings over the next 12 months, near the lowest ratio since 2013.

“The EGX looks extremely cheap right now,” said Allen Sandeep, the director of research at Cairo-based Naeem Brokerage.