Czech equities, as measured by the PX Index, were up by 0.7% for the week to close at 1,599.9. The overall volume of trading on the PSE reached USD 573.8m, 10.3% below its 12M weekly average of USD 639.6m.
The best performance of last week’s session was provided by Philip Morris and it gained 9%. Patria issued its reinitiation of coverage report and started to cover the stock with a Buy recommendation with a fair value of CZK 12,134 per share. Also, Orco outperformed the market, in-line with its regional peers and jumped a nice 5.5% as some analysts upgraded their rating of the company. CME strengthened on the back of an extension of the broadcasting license for its Ukrainian station by another 10 years. Both banks (Erste Bank and Komercni banka) also increased in price. CEZ, the most actively traded stock, became the worst reformer of the week, despite the reinitiation of coverage on the stock by Merrill Lynch and a target price of CZK 1,200.
This is in part due to some of CEZ's managers selling shares from their stock option plan. For the rest of this week, we expect a couple of macroeconomic releases, but on the other hand no major corporate catalysts.