KUALA LUMPUR (March 22): Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) and IHH Healthcare Bhd which have operations in Turkey hogged the limelight in morning trade today after their share prices fell following the Turkish liras sharp decline overnight.
Both counters were among the top losers on the local bourse this morning. MAHB fell by as much as 13 sen or 1.96% to RM6.51 after the opening bell. While it managed to recoup some losses to trade at RM6.53 as at 10.45am, the counter was still down 11 sen or 1.66%, with 210,100 shares traded.
At RM6.53, MAHB had a market capitalisation of RM10.84 billion.
Meanwhile, IHH also fell by as much as 18 sen or 3.28% to RM5.30 before it pared some gains at RM5.32, giving it a market capitalisation of RM46.71 billion, with 1.44 million shares traded.
MAHB operates the Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (Istanbul SGIA), while IHH runs the Acibadem Healthcare group, one of Turkeys leading private healthcare service providers.
The Istanbul SGIA saw its passenger number hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic as the figure fell a whopping 52.1% to 17.2 million passengers in 2020 from 35.95 million passengers a year ago.
The Turkish lira plunged 16% to almost an all-time low yesterday and saw renewed selling interest after it was reported that the countrys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sacked its central bank governor Naci Agbal, according to Reuters.
It added that the move had sent the currency weaker by more than 16% against the US dollar to 8.4 from 7.2185 last Friday, back to levels touched in early November when it reached an intraday record of 8.58.
As of the time of writing today, the Turkish lira was traded at 8.1074 after hovering between 8.0426 and 8.4706. For the past one year, the currency had fallen 24% from 6.56.
Erdogan fired Agbal two days after a sharp rate hike that was meant to head off inflation of nearly 16% and a dipping lira.
In his less than five months on the job, Agbal raised rates by 875 basis points (bps) to 19% and regained some policy credibility as the lira rallied from its nadir. But the currency gave back most of those gains in less than 10 minutes as the weeks trade began.
Meanwhile, the appointment of Sahap Kavcioglu, a former banker and ruling party lawmaker, in the early hours on Saturday marked the third time since mid-2019 that Erdogan abruptly fired a central bank chief, Reuters reported.
A source told the newswire that during a 90-minute call to bank chief executive officers (CEOs) yesterday, Kavcioglu tried to allay fears over a sharp sell-off and a switch to rate cuts from hikes by saying that there were no immediate plans for policy change.
But Goldman Sachs and others predicted the lira and Turkish assets would plunge when financial markets opened for the week given the new governors dovish and even unorthodox views, and what was seen as the latest damage to the banks credibility, it added.
It also quoted Cristian Maggio, a strategist at TD Securities, who had predicted a 10%-15% lira depreciation over the coming days.