The price of shares of Monno Jute Stafflers continued to soar unusually as its share price jumped 5.0 per cent further, exceeding Tk 4,000 per share on Monday.
The share price increased Tk 191.31 each to close at Tk 4,017.50 on Monday, and the price soared 159 per cent or Tk 2,466 each in the past three months.
Now the share tops the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) price-wise, beating out renowned companies like BATBC, Berger Paints, Bata Shoe, Renata, Marico Bangladesh, GlaxoSmithKline and Reckitt Benckiser.
The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) formed a committee on June 21 last to investigate if there was any unusual and suspicious transaction conducted by the Commerce Bank Securities and Investment Ltd in favour of its clients and related parties.
Even after forming the committee and serving of show-cause notice, the price of the company continued to rise.
The authority of Monno Jute Stafflers informed through the DSE that there was no undisclosed price sensitive information, except that the company's board had decided to increase authorised capital from Tk 10 million to Tk 1.0 billion.
Market analysts said the share price cannot soar at such speed solely based on this information and that some other element was at play as the number of shares was very limited.
Such a price hike of a low-cap company within three months is nothing but a speculative hike as there was no news about its business expansion, said an analyst.
The investors should be careful about the unusual price hike of low-cap companies and should not pay any heed to rumours at the time of trading shares, he said.
The company's paid-up capital is only Tk 4.60 million, authorised capital is Tk 10 million and the total number of securities is 460,000.
The sponsor-directors own 55.90 per cent stake in the company while institutional investors 6.42 per cent, foreign investors 0.05 per cent and the general public 37.63 per cent as on May 31, 2018.
The company's earnings per share (EPS) stood at Tk 1.43 for January-March 2018 as against Tk 0.23 for January-March 2017.
In nine months for July 2017-March 2018, its EPS was Tk 2.95 as against Tk 0.60 for July 2016-March 2017.
babulfexpress@gmail.com