The Straits Times / The Business Times News on Cosco

Cosco director picks up shares

AFTER hitting a rough patch in October, Cosco Corp's share price appears to be stabilising, having traded within a tight price range over the past five weeks.

This stability has also attracted large numbers of traders to deal in its shares every day, buoyed by hopes that the share price had found a strong support level.

Filings with the Singapore Exchange show that Mr Wang Xingru, a managing director of Cosco Shipyard Group, the company's ship repair unit, also managed to eke out a small profit by trading the counter in the past two months.

The records show that he bought 50,000 Cosco shares at an average price of $2.3304 on Oct 21, only to sell them at $2.43 apiece just over two weeks later on Nov 8. In so doing, he made a profit of $4,980.

Then he bought 20,000 shares at $2.23 apiece on Nov 21, which he is still holding on to.

Although the size of his purchases is very small, traders are heartened by the interest of insiders in the counter.

And analysts continued to express confidence in Cosco.

JPMorgan, for example, last month raised its target price on the stock to $2.69 from $1.96, after lifting the company's profit forecasts for this year and next year.

Cosco yesterday ended two cents lower at $2.30 on volume of 2.85 million shares.