Ashok buys 10 m shares of his own firm for Rs. 233 m

Tuesday, 19 July 2011 01:10 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Chairman and Managing Director Ashok Pathirage had bought 10 million shares of his company Softlogic Holdings Ltd., for Rs. 233 million in the first week of its trading on the Colombo Stock Exchange.

On Softlogic’s debut on Tuesday he bought 5.6 million shares for Rs. 121.8 million and followed up with 0.87 million shares on Wednesday for Rs. 21 million. Thursday he hadn’t bought but finished the week by buying 3.3 million shares for Rs. 90.4 million on Friday.

On its debut week Softlogic saw 80 million of its shares or 10.3% stake changing hands via 13,182 trades for Rs. 1.83 billion. Ashok’s purchases amounted to 12.5% of the total traded and 1.2% stake of the Company. The share hit a high of Rs. 27.90 and a low of Rs. 16.20 before closing at Rs. 27.10 lower in comparison to the IPO price of Rs. 29.

Yesterday 6.7 million Softlogic shares changed hands via 1,396 trades for Rs. 181 million but it couldn’t be confirmed whether Ashok was still collecting his own shares. The stock peaked to a high of Rs. 28 before closing at Rs. 26.40, down by 70 cents from Friday’s close.

Analysts viewed Ashok buying his own shares as a means to defend the stock from suffering a much steeper fall due to lack of buying whilst others attributed it to him seeing greater value than majority of the market.

Prior to the IPO, Ashok was holding 50.23% stake in the company whilst he and directors held a combined stake of 78.26%.

The only other director to have collected shares in the debut week was R.J. Perera around 200,000 shares for Rs. 4.1 million. His holding prior to the IPO was 9.12%.