Hot stock: Sembmarine down 2.5% on heavy selloff

SHARES in Sembcorp Marine (SMM) were actively traded on Monday morning as the marine and offshore engineering group saw a selloff in its shares following its recapitalisation exercise.

As at 12.11pm, some 95.9 million SMM shares changed hands, making it the most heavily traded counter on the Singapore bourse for the morning.

The counter tumbled more than 3 per cent at one point, before recovering slightly to 15.9 Singapore cents, down 0.4 per cent or 2.5 per cent from Friday's close.

SMM's two-stage corporate exercise involving Sembcorp Industries (SCI) and Temasek Holdings was completed last week.

Under the deal, SMM raised some S$2.1 billion through a five-for-one rights issue of new shares priced at S$0.20 each. The 10.5 billion rights shares were credited last Friday.

SCI and SMM then de-merged, through a distribution in-specie of SCI's stake in the recapitalised SMM.

The market price of SMM could continue to be weighed down in the weeks ahead, as an avalanche of new shares hit the market.

Meanwhile, last Wednesday, investors piled into shares of SCI on the counter's first day of trading excluding entitlements, while SMM's stock inched lower.