KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 4): Petronas Dagangan Bhd (PetDag), the second top loser, and Petronas Gas Bhd (PetGas), the fourth top loser at Bursa Malaysia, saw their shares decline on thin volume due to profit taking after year-end window dressing activities, according to a remisier.

PetDag dipped as much as 60 sen or 2.41% to RM24.26, but pared losses to trade at RM24.34 apiece with a thin volume of 41,000 units as at 12.01pm.

Similarly, Petronas Gas Bhd, which is also the fourth top loser, saw its share price declined 62 sen or 2.73% to a low of RM22.08.

It went up slightly to RM22.34, albeit still declined 34 sen or 1.50%, with 282,800 units traded as at 12.01pm.

A remisier who wished to stay anonymous, said the counter was down, due to fund managers reshuffling their portfolio.

“This also gives opportunity for sell short trader to make profit,” he told theedgemarkets.com.

The remisier pointed out that the trading volume of PetDag was low as one lot or a few lots per transaction, which could be misleading.

“This is similar to other index-linked counters,” he said, noting that Bursa Malaysia should look into this.

The FBM KLCI declined 19.50 points to 1,673.01 points, as at 12.08pm.

However, analysts who covered PetDag and PetGas said that they could not think of any reason that has caused the dips of both counters, as the global oil and gas sentiment did not really affect the companies, as they are both downstream oil and gas player.

HLIB analyst Jason Tan said the volume of PetDag was thin and the drop was insignificant.

Meanwhile, Maybank analyst Tan Chi Wei said the global oil and gas sentiment did not really matter to the companies, as they are downstream players.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)