Share prices on Bursa Malaysia were higher in early trade today with persistent support from investors amid a positive underlying sentiment, boosted further by overnight gains on Wall Street, said a dealer.

At 9.15 am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Composite Index added 5.53 points to 1,283.84 after opening 3.18 points higher at 1,281.47.

Financial stocks remained in the limelight, especially CIMB Group, which saw its share price increase by six sen to RM13.34 after 15 minutes of trading.

Yesterday, CIMB Group's share price soared to its year high as it announced plans to undertake an initial public offering of up to 35 million of its shares, for a dual listing on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET).

The FBM Emas Index rose 29.72 points to 8,572.31, the FBM Top 100 jumped 29.26 points to 8,365.13 and the FBM 70 gained 1.92 points to 8,261.79.

The FBM ACE slipped 17.48 points to 4,510.86.

The Industrial Index climbed 8.52 points to 2,720.78 and the Plantation Index increased 11.57 points to 6,214.35 and the Finance Index rose 34.62 points to 11,118.14.

Gainers led losers by 151 to 44 while 118 counters were unchanged and 985 others untraded.

Upbeat over Maxis listing

TA Securities in its research note said that the FBM KLCI is likely to chart another new high in November with the listing of Maxis this Thursday and the inclusion of the stock into the benchmark index the following day.

"Both local institutional and retail investors could snap up some Maxis shares from the open market due to the unexpectedly low allocation after the book building process.

"As the market is known for attaching a certain level of premium for companies under Ananda Krishnan, Maxis will attract fresh liquidity that could spill over into other stocks," it explained.

A total of 95.928 million shares worth RM54.597 million were transacted.

Leading the actives, Affin Holdings-Warrants 3 inched down 7.5 sen to 37 sen, Scomi Group-Loan Rights perked 1.1 sen to 3.5 sen, Carotech Bhd-OR and Compugates were unchanged at five sen and seven sen respectively.

PPB Group was the top gainer, up 28 sen to RM15.90, followed by HLG Capital, which jumped 19 sen to RM1.45.

Of the heavyweights, Sime Darby earned four sen to RM9.11, Maybank added seven sen to RM6.94 and Tenaga Nasional climbed five sen to RM8.50.

- Bernama