Southern Steel shares fall, short selling suspended

Southern Steel Bhd's earnings jumped to RM70.03mil in the second quarter ended Dec 31, 2017 on higher sale volume of steel products.

KUALA LUMPUR: Shares of Southern Steel fell to a multi-year low of 83 sen on Friday after it announced a much weaker set of earnings in the first quarter ended Sept 30 while the short-selling activities were suspended.

At 10.42am, the shares were down 15.5 sen to 83.5 sen with 1.39 million shares done.

The FBM KLCI fell 3.24 points or 0.19% to 1,693.10. Turnover was 755.18 million shares valued at RM503.90mil. There were 201 gainers, 377 losers and 274 counters unchanged.

Short selling was suspended after it breached the 15% or 15 sen limit. It will resume at 8.30am on Monday.

In Q1, its net profit fell sharply to RM1.78mil from RM53.42mil a year ago. Revenue was higher at RM929.03mil from RM899.74mil. It attributed the decline to higher material costs and electricity tariff hike.