(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Qatar's bourse fell yesterday after Gulf International Services (GIS) said weak oil prices were starting to hurt its drilling rig business. Most other stock markets in the region edged down or were little changed.
Qatar's index lost 1.4 percent as GIS tumbled its daily 10 percent limit to QR86.20, a two-week low. The company posted an 89 percent increase in first-quarter profit yesterday but said a customer of its subsidiary Gulf Drilling International (GDI) would release a contracted rig in May because of oil's decline. It also said another customer had requested lower day rates, and warned investors that these reductions would hurt GDI's 2015 financial results.
Industries Qatar, another firm whose profits are linked to the oil price, dropped 2.3 percent.
Most other stocks in Doha also fell, but shipping firm Qatar Navigation (Milaha) bucked the trend. It inched up 0.1 percent after announcing talks with United Arab Emirates-based United Arab Chemical Carriers on a possible combination of their product and chemical tanker businesses.
Elsewhere in the Gulf, Dubai's index dropped 0.8 percent, moving back below its 100-day average, now at 3,789 points, after closing above the average on Sunday for the first time since October.
Dubai-listed shares in Bahrain's Gulf Finance House tumbled 7.7 percent after the company said it would study the continuation of its equity listings in London and Kuwait. The firm also said its shareholders had approved reducing its capital to $598m from $1.49bn to eliminate accumulated losses.
The company's Kuwait-listed stock dropped 2.6 percent, contributing to the weakness of the Kuwaiti index, which slipped 0.2 percent. Abu Dhabi's market edged up 0.6 percent on the back of blue chip banks; Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank rose 3.6, 2.2 and 1.0 percent respectively.
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