MSCI drops S-E Asian heavyweights Sembcorp, GoTo and Ayala Land from global benchmarks

[JAKARTA] South-east Asia came out empty-handed in MSCI’s latest quarterly review, with no additions to its Global Standard Indexes. Additionally, four of the region’s better-known stocks got the boot from the benchmarks, with three of them relegated to its small-cap indexes.

The deletions include Singapore’s Sembcorp Industries, the Philippines’ Ayala Land and Indonesia’s GoTo Gojek Tokopedia and Charoen Pokphand Indonesia.

Malaysia and Thailand recorded no constituent changes in the Global Standard Indexes in the latest review.

The changes will take effect after the close of trading on Aug 31, said MSCI on early Thursday (Aug 13), after the global index provider reshuffled constituents across Asia-Pacific markets.

As at Thursday, Sembcorp Industries, which will be removed from the MSCI Singapore Index, has a market capitalisation of about US$7.8 billion.

Ayala Land, set to leave the MSCI Philippines Index, is valued at roughly US$3.6 billion.

GoTo, Indonesia’s largest technology company by users, will be removed from the MSCI Indonesia Index amid concerns over the stock’s liquidity. The company’s market capitalisation has fallen to about US$3 billion, from a peak of roughly US$29 billion in 2022 after its initial public offering.

Three of the four stocks will remain within MSCI’s global index universe, albeit among the small caps. Sembcorp Industries, Ayala Land and Charoen Pokphand Indonesia will be added to their respective MSCI small-cap indexes, while GoTo is not among these additions.

The removals from the Global Standard Indexes come as several other Asian markets added constituents in the same review.

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India’s Adani Energy Solutions, worth about US$20.8 billion, was also added.

Taiwan secured six additions in the review, India four and China 33.

All in all, 45 stocks joined MSCI’s Global Standard Indexes across Asia-Pacific markets, while 55 were removed.

The MSCI Singapore Index tracks the performance of Singapore’s large and mid-cap segments. It covers 85 per cent of the free float-adjusted market capitalisation of Singapore stocks.

With the removal of Sembcorp, the top 10 stocks by market cap in the index are DBS, OCBC, UOB, Sea ADR, Singtel, Singapore Exchange, Keppel, ST Engineering, CapitaLand Integrated and Singapore Airlines.