Czech equities, as measured by the PX Index, were off by 0.6% to close last week at 1,439.1. The overall volume of trading on the PSE reached USD 538.6m, 32% below its 12M weekly average of USD 787.2m. CEZ erased part of its value despite S&P raising the company’s credit rating to A- from BBB+. CEZ was the most actively traded stock with about half the total turnover. Philip Morris (PM) was the best performing stock of the last week's session. PM jumped by almost 4% and managed to break the CZK 10,000 level on the back of purchases by foreign investors. Also, Orco finished in positive territory on the back of strong demand in Paris.
Telefonica O2 CR (Cesky Tel) declined, despite a good performance by its regional peers, as international accounts were selling. Erste bank declined in line with the overall Austrian market after negative general election results. Unipetrol closed slightly in the black thanks to domestic demand as the stock was upgraded by us and some other analysts. Unipetrol’s price was also influenced by a halt in production at two of its chemical units. Despite the fact that CME and Komerci Banka were upgraded by some of the analysts, the stocks both declined. Zentiva did not follow along with the good performance of Hungarian pharmas and fell on no news. For this week, we are expecting the release of a number of items of macroeconomics data and the current government should resign on Wednesday.