ASX 200 weekly wrap: BHP, NAB & Afterpay Touch slip

The ASX 200 finished modestly higher last week with BHP Billiton, National Australia Bank and Afterpay Touch among the heavyweights to hold the market back.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index rose 0.75% to 5,939 points and the broader All Ordinaries index lifted 0.60% to 6,042 points over the course of last week.

Healthcare and the mining-related materials were the two major sectors to weigh on the local share market, while the financials, energy, retailers and telecommunications’ sectors made modest gains.

Afterpay Touch suffered the largest fall in share price and the fourth biggest fall in market value among the ASX 200 stocks last week with its shares tumbling 15.3% to $12.50.

Behind the sell-off was Wednesday’s announcement of a Senate inquiry that will put payday lenders and ‘buy now, pay later’ providers like Afterpay under the microscope.

Canstar’s General Manager of Wealth Josh Callaghan said news of the inquiry sent Afterpay’s share price to levels that were almost half of its 52-week high of $23 a share.

“Investors had priced a lot of assumptions around uninhibited growth into the price of Afterpay stocks which is going to make it more sensitive to anything that may hinder that growth,” Mr Callaghan said.

“Even at the new price point, the market has valued the company at over 50 times their forecasted 2020 earnings per share.”

He said uncertainty around rising US interest rates, the ongoing US-China trade dispute and Brexit were some of the global factors that weighed on the local share market last week.

“With no real material news being released locally, the ASX took its lead from some of the wider geopolitical events, including the China and US trade wars,” he said.

“The tech sector continued to come under pressure having experienced strong growth in prices both locally and overseas, leaving some of the companies potentially overvalued.

“This has led to choppy trade in the markets as investors look to sell down overvalued parts of their portfolio and look for stocks that have been oversold in the last couple of weeks.”

Among the major banks, Commonwealth Bank and Westpac made share price gains of more than 1% last week, while National Australia Bank’s share price did the opposite and dropped about 1%.

As for the miners, shares in BHP Billiton dropped 2.2% to $33.10, slicing $2.4 billion from the global miner’s market value, while base metal miner South32 gave up $613 million in market value after its share price fell 3.1% to $3.76.

A standout last week was investment conglomerate Washington H. Soul Pattinson which led share price gains with an almost 19% jump to $30.51. This gave the company’s market value a $1.14 billion boost.

Meanwhile, UK lender and ASX-listed financial group CYBG has completed the acquisition of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Money Holdings, which offers a number of financial products, including mortgages, credit cards and insurance.

The acquisition has boosted CYBG’s market value by more than $2.3 billion.

Strengthening gold prices have once again helped the gold producers with Saracen Mineral posting the second highest share price gain of nearly 13% at $2.39 a share.

The healthcare sector came under pressure last week, including a steep fall from private hospital operator Healthscope with its share price down almost 10% at $1.81.