Masri: The decision to buy PADICO’s shares achieves significant gains for its shareholders
Rawabi, 23 May 2022
In a transaction, which is the largest in the history of the Palestine Exchange, PADICO, through one of its financial investments arm, purchased 42.2 million shares of its traded shares at an amount of $51 million. and the transaction was executed at a price of $1.21 per share.
With this transaction, PADICO’s portfolio owned about 18% of the company shares, bringing the book value of the share to $1.75 per share, which is approximately 40% higher than the trading price.
Commenting on this transaction, Bashar Masri, the Chairman of PADICO’s BOD said, “the decision of the company to buy its shares achieves remarkable gains for the shareholders and raises the return on equity (ROE), which is considered one of the most important indicators of profitability, as the real value of the company exceeds its market value with a substantial difference.”
Masri added, “the company’s policy that is based on strengthening the financial center during the last few years enabled it to implement this important and large transaction and prepared it to distribute sustainable profits to shareholders in the future,” stressing that the decision to purchase these shares comes within PADICO’s strategic directions and contributes to supporting the investment process started by the company for more than a quarter of a century.
Since last year, PADICO’s share has witnessed remarkable activity in trading volumes and an increase in the share price by more than 50%. This was accompanied by the company’s increase in annual profits, which amounted to $21.1 million last year, and continued to improve to reach $6.8 million for the first quarter of this year.
It is expected that PADICO’s share price will witness additional activity due to the recent increase in the price of Palestine Telecommunications Company’s shares in the past period, following the announcement of the establishment of Arkaan Real Estate Company, which will be listed on the Palestine Exchange on 3 July 2022, noting that PADICO is the largest shareholder in both companies by more than 30%.
It is worth noting that PADICO is a public shareholding company listed on the Palestine Exchange, and it is an investment holding company with a broad shareholder base of about 7000 shareholders whose goal is investment and development in Palestine. It is considered the largest investment group in Palestine as the market value of PADICO and its companies listed on the Palestine Exchange is $1.8 billion, which constitutes about 40% of the market value of the stock exchange.
