Thursday, August 11, 2011

Plantations among major losers

KUALA LUMPUR: PLANTATION [] stocks were among the major losers in late morning on Thursday, Aug 11 in line with the weaker crude palm oil (CPO) prices and expectations that the prices could sink lower on recession fears.

At 11.01am, Batu Kawan was down 26 sen to RM15.16, Glenealy 25 sen to RM5.27 and United Plantations 20 sen to RM18.60 in thin trade.

The FBM KLCI was down 6.54 points to 1,473.98. Turnover was 406.83 million shares valued at RM709.35 million. Losers beat gainers 477 to 149.

CIMB Equities Research said the 3% month-on-month drop in Malaysia's palm oil stocks to 2.0 million tonnes in July or 4% below the 2.09m tonnes expected by the research house us and the market was good news for CPO price.

'But we continue to expect CPO price to head south, possibly to as low as RM2,600 per tonne if the current fears of a global recession gather steam,' it said.

CIMB Research said it made no changes to its CPO price forecasts for now but flag the downside risk to our price forecasts if global economic prospects deteriorate.

'We may review our NEUTRAL call on the Malaysian plantation sector if the fundamentals for CPO price worsen and costs become more of an issue. Sime Darby remains our top plantation pick in Malaysia while Wilmar is our top regional pick,' it said.

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