Overall sectoral performance in 2021

The yearly ending stats depicts that Technology and textile spinning were the top performing sectors during the calendar year 2021 posting returns of 37 percent and 35 percent based on market cap. On the other hand, tobacco and refinery sectors remained the worst performing sectors posted a decline of 35 percent and 29 percent, respectively. Technology sector in line with global trend continued to remain investor’s favorite sector post-pandemic. Pakistan’s rising IT exports, government focus to facilitate IT sector, and PKR devaluation have led to higher sales and profitability for the tech sector. Textile spinning sector also posted strong gains in 2021 amid rising exports, record cotton prices and huge inventory gains during the year. In contrast, tobacco sector remained impacted due to increasing competition from illicit and unbranded cigarettes available at discounted rates. Hascol Petroleum was the worst performing stock of 2021. TELE was followed by TPL Properties (TPLP) and System limited (SYS) that also registered strong gains in 2021. Systems Limited (SYS), Pakistan’s largest listed IT firm remained amongst the top performing stocks for the second consecutive year as the company continued to post strong profitability growth of 56 percent in 9M2021.