KUALA LUMPUR (June 29): AmInvestment Bank Bhd upped its Bursa Malaysia Bhd share fair value to RM8.20 from RM6.40 and raised its earnings forecast for the stock exchange operator and regulator after factoring in higher daily average trading value (DATV) for the securities market.

AmInvestment analyst Kelvin Ong said in a note today AmInvestment maintained its "buy" call for Bursa shares.

"We rolled over our valuation to FY21. Our FY20/21/22 earnings have been raised by 17.2%-43.4%, factoring in higher DATV of RM2.8/2.5/2.65 billion for the securities market. Also, we have increased our assumptions for the average daily contracts traded for derivatives in FY20/21/22 to 65,000/67,600/69,628.

"We continue to peg the stock to a PE of 24.0 times (5-year historical average PE). The continued volatility will augur well for the securities and derivatives market.

"Bursa is likely to release its 2QFY20 results in the final week of July. We expect a robust 2QFY20 earnings of RM90-91 million which will be higher than 1QFY20’s RM65 million," Ong said.

At 5pm today, Bursa's share price closed unchanged at RM7.28 for a market capitalisation of RM5.88 billion. The stock saw 3.26 million shares traded.