Tel Aviv stocks widening drops to 1.2% Tuesday afternoon

Tel Aviv stocks are widening drops to 1.2% Tuesday afternoon. Late morning, stocks cut 0.8% opening drops to 0.3%. However, the Maof-25 blue chip index is now down 1.2% to 377.5 points, the TA-100 index is off 0.9%, and technology shares are off 0.8%.

On Monday leading indices corrected upward with 1.3% to 1.8% gains following drops in recent days. Turnover remained low, and is expected to be low today too. Mild drops on Nasdaq Monday are expected to depress local stocks.

The bond market is expected to be affected by the NIS 3 billion offering of short-term debt certificates of up to one year.

Investment bank DBM's Rami Dror noted investors were positive about the NIS 1 billion bond issue Monday by the treasury.

Dror expects investors will adopt a positive stance toward recent declarations by Bank of Israel Governor David Klein against the NIS 13 billion emergency economic plan, given that Klein has demonstrated economic leadership and responsibility.

Israel Chemicals is edging up 0.1% after German chemicals giant BASF beat Q1 growth estimates and said it expects substantially improved earnings this year.

Drug giant Teva Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:TEVA) is off 1.6% on 1.3% negative arbitrage spread. Teva closed up 3.3% on Monday after beating Q1 estimates, posting 11% revenue growth to $545 million, and $86 million profit, 64 cents earning per share, against the forecast 55 cents EPS. Local investors were pleased with the results, investors overseas weren't too impressed.

Dror noted that in recent quarters, Teva shares tended to climb ahead of the release of quarterly results, but after publication the company lost ground.

Cellular provider Partner Communications (Nasdaq, TASE:PTNR, LSE:PCCD) has turned to 1.6% drops after earlier climbing 0.9%. On Monday the company posted NIS 103.8 million operating profit for Q1, double operating profit in Q4 last year. Revenue grew by 5% to NIS 929.5 million. Loss came to NIS 22.9 million, against NIS 34.2 million loss in Q4, and lower than the forecast NIS 60 million loss. Partner climbed 2.4% on Nasdaq Monday.

Digital-recording systems maker Nice Systems (Nasdaq:NICE) is bucking the trend as it rises by 1.3%. Yesterday Nice closed up 5.6% on TASE, and climbed 3.1% on Nasdaq. The company announced Monday it has won a new contract worth millions of dollars and is to provide NiceTrack systems to a Western law enforcement agency. Nice didn't disclose the country, but said this is one of its biggest contracts to date.

Holding firm Discount Investments is down 1% on big turnover. Discount Investments dropped an aggregate 13% this month. The present mood is related to the positive Q1 report released by Cellcom. Cellcom posted NIS 1.2 billion sales in Q1, 4% more than in the Q1 of 2001. Profit came to NIS 175 million, 28% more than in the parallel quarter. For Discount Investments this is a positive report, despite sales stabilizing in recent quarters.