KUALA LUMPUR, July 23 — Bursa Malaysia ended lower today on late selling on selected heavyweights led by British American Tobacco (BAT), dealers said.

At 5pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) finished at 1,722.44, down 7.09 points, after fluctuating between 1,722.44 and 1,731.18 throughout the day.

A dealer said the local stock market has been trading sideways this week on lack of market drivers amid the absence of positive local leads.

However, late selling on selected heavyweights, led by BAT, as well as losses on Petronas-linked companies, dragged the Bursa Malaysia lower.

BAT shed 92 sen to RM64.78, Petronas Chemicals and Petronas Gas lost 14 sen each to RM6.44 and RM21.64 respectively and Petronas Dagangan eased eight sen to RM20.56.

On the scoreboard, the FBM Emas Index shed 33.82 points to 11,900.16, FBMT100 Index fell 39.62 points to 11,568.95 and the FBM Syariah contracted 33.28 points to 12,351.12.

The FBM 70 went down 14.56 points to 12,864.74. The FBM Ace jumped 63.97 points to 6,482.55.

On a sectoral basis, the Finance Index lost 15.489 points to 15,555.11, Industrial Index declined 24 points to 3,176.24 and the Plantation Index dwindled 62.04 points to 7,439.76.

Gainers outnumbered losers by 491 to 317, with 319 counters unchanged, 683 untraded and 13 others suspended.

Total volume rose to 1.76 billion units valued at RM1.68 billion from Wednesday’s 1.66 billion units valued at RM1.68 billion.

Among actives, Datasonic chalked up nine sen to RM1.34, Scanwolf rose seven sen to RM54 sen and AWC added three sen to 41.5 sen.

Frontken and RGB were flat at 27 sen and 14 sen respectively.

Of the heavyweights, Maybank eased one sen to RM9.19, Axiata slipped two sen to RM6.37 and Sime Darby lost nine sen to RM8.44.

Public Bank and TNB were flat at RM19.02 and RM12.30 respectively.

Main Market volume rose to 1.18 billion shares worth RM1.53 billion from yesterday’s 1.01 billion shares worth RM1.48 billion.

Turnover on the ACE Market decreased to 288.88 million units valued at RM83.79 million from 405.08 million units valued at RM109.94 million.

Warrants rose to 288.87 million units worth RM73.78 million from 247.08 million units worth RM82.42 million previously.

Consumer products accounted for 183.53 million shares traded on the Main Market, industrial products (272.95 million), construction (53.22 million), trade and services (450.98 million), technology (60.09 million), infrastructure (20.3 million), SPAC (6.69 million), finance (52.59 million), hotels (1.01 million), properties (51.64 million), plantations (10.88 million), mining (23,700), REITs (18.68 million), and closed/fund (5,500). — Bernama