Bulgarian Stock Exchange-Sofia AD registered a turnover of 3.38 bln leva in 2006. An all time monthly high was registered in December when turnover reached 704.58 mln leva. The data is taken from BSE’s last year operating report.

Compared to 2005 turnover last year dropped by 5.51% mainly due to the privatization of 35% of the Bulgarian Telecommunication Company in the end of January 2005. Without this transaction, last year turnover increased 14.76% from 2005.

Serious growth was registered in the three segments of the official stock market (+127.80%). The number of issues registered on the official market dropped from 34 to 29 due to the restructuring of its segments.

Stronger dynamics came mainly from Segment B, which accounted for 79.46% of the total turnover on the official market last year. On the unofficial stock market a total of 117.67 mln lots were transacted worth 1.45 bln leva compared to 929.56 mln leva in 2005.

The number of transactions on this segment increased 4.11% which means that the average value of one transaction in 2006 was 12.918 leva versus 8.622 leva in 2005.

Bond markets turnover reached 297.46 mln leva last year increasing 18.01% from 2005. The relative share of this segment in the total turnover expanded from 7.04% in 2005 to 8.79% in 2006. The number of registered bond issue grew from 53 to 73 mainly due to the big number of new issues on the unofficial bond market.

Experts expect bond market to continue to expand rapidly in 2007. Considering the nature of this type of instruments and the fact that investors prefer to keep them until their maturity, analysts don’t expect any significant rise in trade dynamics.

A total of 433 transactions were made on the primary stock market worth 12.30 mln leva compared to 233 transactions worth 5.45 mln leva in 2005. Trade on the primary market of other securities registered a growth of 477.04% to 10.06 mln leva.

The average daily turnover on BSE in 2006 was 13.59 mln leva compared with 249 trading sessions compared to 14.27 mln leva and 251 trading sessions in 2005. The unofficial market had the biggest weight in the daily trade last year – 42.84% of the average daily turnover, followed by the official stock market, segment B – 19.81%, and the block and other agreed transactions – 16.04%.

The shares of a total of 312 companies were traded in at least one trading session in 2006. In the beginning of January the stock of 341 companies was registered for trade on BSE-Sofia. 12 companies were delisted and 29 new companies went public last year. 58 listed companies registered no transactions between 3 January and 22 December last year.