GP shares keep bleeding

Grameenphone (GP) shares plunged for the second straight session due to the telecom regulator’s ban on the sale of new SIM cards by the country’s largest mobile phone operator.

The shares continued to hit lower limit circuits at 2 per cent. In two trading days, including Sunday, it lost 4 per cent to over Tk 288 on the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

More than 61,000 shares valued at Tk 3.45 crore were traded.

On Wednesday, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission issued an order blocking GP from selling new connections, citing the “poor quality” of the operator’s services.

GP shares began trading in the morning at just a little over Tk 300 but fell by Tk 6 in the first hour before closing at Tk 294.1 on Thursday. The market’s heavyweight GP made its stock market debut in 2009, accounting for nearly 8 per cent of the DSE total market cap.

The telecom operator’s customer base was around 8.5 crore as of May, making up 46 per cent of total mobile phone users, the highest among the four mobile phone operators in the country.

GP reported a net profit of Tk 809.82 crore for the quarter ended March 2022, down 9 per cent from Tk 890.63 crore in the year-ago period.

Its net asset value (NAV) per share was Tk 42.94 as of March 31, 2022, down 4 per cent from Tk 45.19 in the same period a year earlier.