KUALA LUMPUR, July 23 — Share prices on Bursa Malaysia rebounded to open higher this morning in line with other regional markets amid positive sentiment, dealers said.

At 9.03am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) stood at 1,805.92, up 8.24 points, after opening 9.52 points higher at 1,807.2, with gains seen in finance stocks and key heavyweights.        

HwangDBS Vickers Research, however, said the local bourse’s performance may be suppressed in the near-term by prevailing profit-taking activities.

“Still, we expect the benchmark FBM KLCI to swing sideways with a slight positive bias, possibly striving to cross the psychological mark of 1,800 points level, going forward,” the research firm said in a note today.

In terms of news flows, on tap today will be Bursa Malaysia’s plan to unveil liberalisation measures to spur interest in regulated short-selling activity on the local stock exchange.

On the corporate front, the focus could be on stocks like Deleum, which secured an undisclosed oil and gas contract for the provision of equipment and services for drilling and production operations.

It also included Public Bank and Malaysia Airports as both are due to release their quarterly earnings report cards this afternoon, said HwangDBS.

On the scoreboard, the Finance Index surged 63.77 points to 17,318.04, the Industrial Index rose 21.32 points to 3,063.58 and the Plantation Index advanced 39.42 points to 8,446.58.

The FBM Emas Index climbed 50.91 points to 12,588.25, the FBM100 Index improved 50.31 points to 12,322.14, the FBM 70 Index increased 34.69 points to 14,476.41 and the FBM ACE Index gained 4.03 points to 4,999.82.

Market breadth was positive as gainers outpaced losers 138 to 38, while 101 counters were unchanged, 1,311 untraded and 14 others were suspended.

Turnover amounted at 31.668 million shares worth RM25.657 million.

Among actives, Karambunai inched up half-a-sen to 13 sen, Majuperak added two sen to 44 sen but TMC Life shed one sen to 45 sen.

Newly-listed ABM Fujiya opened at 64.5 sen per share, for a premium of 4.5 sen over its issue price of 60 sen, with 7.966 million lots exchanging hands at the opening bell.     

Heavyweights, Maybank perked four sen to RM10.70, both Axiata Group and Maxis earned three sen each to RM6.86 and RM7.08 respectively, Sime Darby rose seven sen to RM9.57 but CIMB slipped one sen to RM8.47. – Bernama