Richter Falls to 6-Month Low as MSCI Exit Looms: Budapest Mover

Gedeon Richter Nyrt., Hungary’s biggest drugmaker, fell to the lowest in almost six months before the stock is dropped from MSCI Inc.’s Hungarian index at the end of this month.

The shares slumped 2.9 percent to 35,560 forint, the lowest close since May 30 and bringing its decline in the past four trading sessions to 6.1 percent. The benchmark BUX stock index in which Richter has a 19 percent weighting fell 1 percent today.

Richter was the only Hungarian stock to be removed from the MSCI Hungary Index as part of a semi-annual review of the gauge’s members, effective Nov. 30, according to a statement on MSCI’s website on Nov. 14. The shares have retreated 12 percent since the announcement.

“There may be renewed selling pressure on the stock in the coming days,” Gergely Tardos, a Budapest-based analyst at OTP Bank Nyrt., Hungary’s largest lender, wrote in an e-mailed report today, citing the exit from the MSCI basket.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andras Gergely in Budapest at agergely@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at gserkin@bloomberg.net