KUALA LUMPUR: Blue chips closed sharply higher in late trade on Tuesday as local funds picked up Hong Leong Bank, Tenaga Nasional and Axiata.

At 5pm, the FBM KLCI was up 14.36 points or 0.88% to 1,652.76. Turnover was 2.03 billion shares valued at RM1.71bil. Decliners led gainers 428 to 357 while 386 counters were unchanged.

Mestron, which made its debut on the ACE Market, ended its first day just 0.5 sen higher at 16.5 sen, off the early high of 21 sen. It was the most active with 367 million shares done.

Hong Leong Bank was the top gainer, up 56 sen to RM19.26 – the highest since June 11.

Tenaga rose 26 sen to RM13 after shaking off last week's selling pressure.

LNG shipper MISC added 23 sen to RM7.20. As for telcos, Axiata gained 24 sen to RM4.95.

Petronas Dagangan and Petronas Gas added 18 sen each to RM25.48 and RM17.60.

Greatec, which was also recently listed, rose nine sen to 99 sen and it was the second most active with 95.67 million sahares. HPMT was up one sen to 45 sen.

Top Glove's shares closed 13 sen lower at RM4.87, recovering from the intra-day low of RM4.67 after it reported a weaker set of earnings in the third quarter ended May 31, 2019.

Mestron, which made its debut on the ACE Market, closed up 0.5 sen to 16.5 sen.  It hit a high of 21 sen earlier.

AirAsia fell seven sen to RM2.75 after it was downgraded by Citi to sell from neutral. The target price was lowered to RM1.48 from RM3.01, implying a 47% decrease. AirAsia average TP was RM2.62.