Mr. Nader Azar the Acting CEO of the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) said that the ASE has conducted its periodic quarterly review of the ASE index constituents in purpose of ensuring that the ASE General Price Index reflects the market performance and the trading activity of the listed companies. By this rebalancing, the activity of listed companies in regard to trading during the last quarter has been reviewed. After that, the ASE has conducted its screening process for all listed companies using the full market capitalization of the companies and the number of trading days during last quarter. It is worth mentioning that the criteria adopted by the ASE are similar to the international practices applied in this field. These criteria are applied in a number of leading international index providers such as the S&P Dow Jones.
Mr. Azar added that as a result of this review, seven companies have been deleted from the index sample and other seven companies have been added. As part of the rebalancing, the ASE calculated the free float shares for all listed companies at the ASE based on the data available at the Securities Depository Center (SDC) website. This review also includes the reduction of the weights for some companies to maintain the 10% cap that applied to index constitutes.
Mr. Azar clarified that the index sample includes one hundred companies which are the most active in the ASE and the highest in terms of market capitalization. The full market capitalization of index constituents' represents (91%) of the total market capitalization of the companies listed at the ASE. The free float market capitalization of the index constitutes' represents (88%) of the total free float market capitalization of the listed companies at the ASE.
In light of the above, the index constituents will be modified starting the first of October 2014. Interested parties can access to the constituents of the index with the new weights through the following link:
http://www.exchange.jo/en/constituents