KUALA LUMPUR (June 11): Shares and warrants of AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) were actively traded after its rights shares and new warrants were listed on Bursa Malaysia effective today.

Interestingly, shares of sister airline AirAsia Bhd were also active.

Pursuant to AAX’s rights issue with warrants announced in February this year, some 1.78 billion rights shares and 888.89 million warrants were granted listing and quotation at 9am today.

At midday break, the AAX mother share saw some 52.4 million shares changed hands. The second most active counter slipped 1.5 sen or 6.1% to 23 sen.

However, its newly-listed warrant AAX-WA, which was the third most active counter, soared 5 sen or 1,000% to 5.5 sen. Some 47 million units were traded.

While historically the mother share and warrant have shown to move in tandem, the opposite movements seen at AAX’s share and warrant were deemed “normal”, according an aviation analyst.

“It is the first day of trading of the securities,” the aviation analyst told theedgemarkets.com.

“The warrant has no reference price. The gain of 5 sen is just a fair price for the warrant as dictated by the market.

“On the other hand, investors may be dumping shares as they would end up with more shares after the rights issue,” he said.

The aviation analyst, however, was puzzled as to why AirAsia shares were actively traded too.

“We don’t think there is any relation to AAX’s rights issue with warrants,” he said.

AirAsia fell 16 sen or 7.9% to RM1.86. The fourth most active counter saw trades of some 27.1 million shares.

On AAX, a dealer who declined to be named said investors may be cutting their losses given the significant discount in AAX’s share price since its IPO of RM1.25.

“Investors may be taking profit,” he said.