Tel Aviv stocks recover 0.5% Thursday mid-morning

Israel Chemicals stands out with 2.2% gains on PotashCorp optimistic outlook

Author:: TheMarker.com Staff
Publish date:: Apr 26, 2002 12:38 PM EDT

Tel Aviv stocks are rallying 0.5% from their 2.8% plunge yesterday. The sharp drops Wednesday came in response to reports of treasury plans for a tax on capital gains.

The Maof-25 blue chips index is up 0.5% to 388.2 points, the TA-100 index is up 0.3% to 374.2 points, while technology shares are slipping 0.1%. At NIS 240 million, total turnover is relatively low for option expiry says.

Options on the Maof-25 index for April expired, the options index closing up 0.5% to 388.2.Turnover at expiry was a moderate NIS 215 million.

Israel Chemicals stands out with 2.2% gains on NIS 15 million volume. The rise is probably in response to the results released by Canadian chemicals giant Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan (NYSE:POT), which posted 12% growth in potash sales in Q1, despite prices sliding by 2%. PotashCorp expects results to improve given anticipated increase in agricultural land worldwide, and especially in the United States. The firm expects expansion in land allocated for growing corn, a fertilizer-intensive crop.

Bank stocks continue to slide. Bank Hapoalim is down 0.3% on NIS 30 million volume. On Wednesday, Bank Hapoalim dropped 2.7%. Bank Leumi is off 0.4% on NIS 27 million volume, after yesterday closing down 4.4%.

The drops are attributed to reports debt-burdened cable TV firm Tevel is likely to ask its bank creditors to forgive hundreds of millions of shekels in debt. In 2001, the banks wrote off debt of the communications sector worth hundreds of millions of shekels.

Tevel's debt to Bank Leumi comes to NIS 957 million, and to Bank Hapoalim, NIS 494 million.

Drug giant Teva Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:TEVA) is off 0.6% on the session's biggest turnover, NIS 31 million. Teva opened on 0.5% positive arbitrage.

Tower Semiconductor (Nasdaq:TSEM) is dropping 2.5%, Elbit (Nasdaq:ELBT) is off 1.8%. On Wednesday, Tower said it had received another $41 million from strategic partners to its Fab 2 plant.

Cellular provider Partner Communications (Nasdaq, TASE:PTNR, LSE:PCCD) is up 3.7%, Nice Systems (Nasdaq:NICE) is rising 1%, Elbit (Nasaq:ELBT) is up 1.8%.