Khulna Printing stock price double in 3 weeks
FE REPORT | Friday, 10 January 2025
Khulna Printing & Packaging has recently been flying high on the Dhaka Stock Exchange while the company has been enduring losses without any sign of recovery. Its operation has remained suspended for more than three years.
It has been producing nothing since October 2021 due to a severe working capital shortage. The aggregate loss in the five years through FY22 is about Tk 960 million.
The company reported a loss of Tk 8 million for July-December 2022. Since then it has not published any more financial reports.
Despite the grim performance, the stock almost doubled in just three weeks to Thursday on the Dhaka bourse without any reason for investors to be keen on betting on the stock.
The stock continued to soar and jumped 4.72 per cent further on Thursday to close at Tk 13.3 per share, becoming the day's 11th top gainer on the prime bourse.
The stock made it to the top gainers' list frequently in recent times.
Such an unusual price movement prompted the prime bourse to serve a show-cause notice to the company authority several times, enquiring about the reasons behind that.
"But the company has not provided any response to the queries," the DSE said in a statement on Thursday.
Khulna Printing got listed in the stock market in 2014.
Its factory has remained closed since 2021 after the court ordered freezing of bank accounts of SM Amzad Hossain, owner of the company, in a money laundering case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). Amzad Hossain had reportedly taken out loans, using a fake identity.
The ACC also banned the sale and transfer of shares in the names of Amzad Hossain, his wife and daughter, over an allegation that he had tried to smuggle money outside the country by selling shares.
A hike in the share price is unusual considering the current status of the company, said a leading stockbroker, adding that the stock was rising mainly due to some rumours that the market value would increase further.