Marking a record Market Cap Palestine Exchange reviews main -2022 results and looks forward to new horizons in -2023

Ramallah, Wednesday 11/01/2023

Palestine Exchange (PEX) has released its main results and significant achievements of 2022, as well as its main aspirations for the near future in 2023

This came during the press conference held by Palestine Exchange in Ramallah under the title “PEX: 2022 outcome,” which witnessed significant presence by media outlets, representatives of securities’ market led by the Palestine Capital Market Authority, several listed companies and brokerage firms.

Mr. Samir Hulileh, Chairman of PEX, started the conference with a quick review of the main events that have affected the Palestinian economy during 2022, which highly impacted its performance, especially after the limited recovery it enjoyed following 2020, suffering a withdrawal again as a result of the current global financial crisis and international geopolitical circumstances and their aftermath of inflation and global increase in prices.

As a result, Palestine’s securities market was not isolated from these changes, which affected the market’s ability to adapt to the lack of liquidity and achieve satisfactory results for investors, he also pointed out that the current variables point that the market is expected to suffer more recession, and the growth index will not exceed 2.5% compared to 2022 and 2021, where it has achieved growth of 3.6% and 7% respectively.

Hulileh assured that PEX’s currently focusing on redirecting investment activities in Palestine and spot light on the securities market as a sector that’s able to promote economic development, where the investments in bank deposits and real estate has the higher share compared to the investment in market securities; talking numbers, the total number of investors in PEX exceeded 70 thousand distributed on 123K active and inactive account as of the end of 2022. While only 2500 account were opened last year.

Mr. Nihad Kamal, General Director of PEX focused in his presentation on the main performance indicators of 2022, beside launching the Al Quds Islamic Index, the market has witnessed new listings and important deals; Arkaan Real Estate Investment Company (spin-off of Paltel Group) and Safa Bank were listed for trading. The market has also witnessed the biggest deal of its history, the deal was USD 51 million of PADICO Holding’s shares.

Kamal also said: “statistical data show that PEX has achieved distinguished performance if compared to other regional and global markets; QUDS main index has witnessed an increase of 5.14% while Arab markets such as KSA and Qatar have witnessed noticeable deterioration. On the other hand, some global markets have suffered severe deterioration; around 33% for NASDAQ and 20% for Standard & Poor's Global.”

He added: “in terms or trading, the market has witnessed USD 473 million in trading value, 13% higher than 2021, and the highest since 2010. The number of traded shares has also increased by 21% compared to 2021, average daily trading value reached USD 1.9 million across 247 trading sessions. In 2022, PEX has reached its highest ever market value of an estimate of USD 4.9 billion, 11% higher than 2021.

This year consists of various challenges, and will take, according to Hulileh, special efforts to list more companies; discussions regarding this are currently underway, especially with new public shareholding companies in various sectors being established in the meantime, in addition to active public shareholding companies and private companies that can be transferred to public and listed for trading. He also stressed the importance of reconsidering the nature of listed companies and their relationship with investors, in addition to the amount of free float shares, which are the most significant liquidity source in the market.

In a related context, Hulileh said: “The securities sector in Palestine has seen many developments in the organizing environment, especially with the new companies’ law; the Palestine Capital Market Authority has worked on drafting new law regarding Islamic Sukuk and treasury stocks, and the regulations of the controls of transferring publicly shareholding companies into private ones, in parallel to the efforts to issue an updated code of governance that considers sustainability and other aspects of the Companies Law.

He also added that “the efforts in the coming period must focus on the securities sector, adapt the legal environment and its regulations to serve investment in this sector and empower the youth and make PEX an attractive investment opportunity for them and Palestinians of the 48 areas, by making PEX an easily accessible market. This takes collective efforts off all elements of securities sector and The Palestine Monetary Authority.”

Hulileh has asserted as well that there is a need to utilize more tools to meet investors’ aspirations such as bonds and crowdfunding funds for startups in Palestine, in addition to activating investment funds in the Palestinian market.