KSE-100 heavyweights: what actually moves the index
The top 15 KSE-100 companies by weight as of 11 Sep 2026, why free-float weighting lets ten names carry half the index, and what that means for you.
As of 11 September 2026, ten companies carried 49.4% of the KSE-100’s weight, fifteen carried 61.8%, and twenty carried 69.2%. The other eighty constituents shared the remaining 31%, and the bottom fifty of them added up to just 11.0%. The top two alone, Fauji Fertilizer and United Bank, outweigh those fifty put together. So when the news says “the market rose 1%”, it is mostly reporting on a dozen banks, energy and fertiliser companies. The reason is the weighting method: the KSE-100 weights each company by its free-float market capitalisation, so a large company with plenty of tradable shares dominates and a small one barely registers. The figures here come from Equivest’s constituents snapshot dated 11 September 2026 and will have drifted since; the live list is on the KSE-100 constituents page.
The top 15 by weight
| Rank | Symbol | Company | Sector | Weight | Free-float value (Rs bn) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | FFC | Fauji Fertilizer Company | Fertiliser | 8.91% | 428 |
| 2 | UBL | United Bank | Bank | 7.76% | 373 |
| 3 | MEBL | Meezan Bank | Bank | 5.19% | 249 |
| 4 | ENGROH | Engro Holdings | Conglomerate | 4.96% | 239 |
| 5 | OGDC | Oil and Gas Development Company | Oil and gas | 4.30% | 207 |
| 6 | HUBC | Hub Power | Power | 4.12% | 198 |
| 7 | LUCK | Lucky Cement | Cement | 3.81% | 183 |
| 8 | HBL | Habib Bank | Bank | 3.69% | 178 |
| 9 | MCB | MCB Bank | Bank | 3.38% | 163 |
| 10 | MARI | Mari Energies | Oil and gas | 3.24% | 156 |
| 11 | PPL | Pakistan Petroleum | Oil and gas | 3.05% | 147 |
| 12 | BAHL | Bank AL Habib | Bank | 2.65% | 127 |
| 13 | SYS | Systems Limited | Technology | 2.46% | 118 |
| 14 | EFERT | Engro Fertilizers | Fertiliser | 2.36% | 114 |
| 15 | POL | Pakistan Oilfields | Oil and gas | 1.94% | 93 |
“Free-float value” is the free-float share count multiplied by the price on the snapshot date, which is the quantity the index actually weights. The 100 constituents together had a free-float value of roughly Rs 4,808 billion, so each company’s weight is simply its share of that total.
How free-float weighting works
Every index needs a rule for how much each member counts. The KSE-100 uses free-float market capitalisation, which takes two steps.
Market capitalisation is share price multiplied by the number of shares in issue; it is the market’s price for the whole company rather than for one slice of it. If that idea is new, market cap vs share price explains why a Rs 55 share can belong to a bigger company than a Rs 1,100 one.
Free float narrows that to the shares that can actually trade. PSX excludes shares held by sponsors and directors, by government, by associated companies and strategic investors, and anything otherwise locked in. What is left is the float, and the company’s weight is its float multiplied by price, divided by the same figure summed across all 100 members.
Take FFC on the snapshot date: about 791 million free-float shares at Rs 541.37 is roughly Rs 428 billion. Divide by the index total of Rs 4,808 billion and you get 8.9%, which matches the 8.91% published once the exact float and price are used. The same arithmetic gives UBL 7.8% and Systems Limited 2.5%.
The free-float adjustment matters most for state-owned names. OGDC is majority-owned by the Government of Pakistan, so most of its shares never change hands. On a full-market-cap basis it would be far larger than FFC; on a free-float basis it ranks fifth. Weighting by float makes the index reflect what investors can actually buy.
Why the top ten dominate
An index move is the sum of each member’s price move multiplied by its weight. That single sentence explains the concentration.
If FFC rises 1% on a day when nothing else moves, the KSE-100 rises 0.0891% (its 8.91% weight times 1%). At an index level around 175,000, that is about 156 points from one stock. If every one of the bottom fifty constituents rises 1% on the same day, their combined 11.0% weight lifts the index by 0.110%, or about 192 points. One company’s ordinary day is worth almost as much as fifty companies moving in unison.
This is why market reports talk about “index points contributed” by individual names, and why a market wrap can read “the index fell despite advancers outnumbering decliners”. Sixty small stocks going up cannot offset three heavyweights going down.
The concentration is not a flaw in the index; it reflects how PSX is built. A few very large banks, energy producers and fertiliser makers sit at the top of a long tail of much smaller companies. Any capitalisation-weighted index of that market will look top-heavy. The KSE-100 explainer covers how the 100 are chosen in the first place.
Sector concentration in the top 20
Grouping the twenty largest weights by sector shows a second layer of concentration.
| Sector | Companies in the top 20 | Combined weight |
|---|---|---|
| Banks | UBL, MEBL, HBL, MCB, BAHL, NBP, BAFL, FABL | 27.2% |
| Oil and gas (exploration and marketing) | OGDC, MARI, PPL, POL, PSO | 14.2% |
| Fertiliser | FFC, EFERT | 11.3% |
| Conglomerate | ENGROH | 5.0% |
| Power | HUBC | 4.1% |
| Cement | LUCK | 3.8% |
| Technology | SYS | 2.5% |
| Autos | MTL | 1.1% |
| Top 20 total | 69.2% |
Eight banks carry more than a quarter of the entire index. Add Engro Holdings, whose subsidiaries include fertiliser and energy businesses, to the fertiliser and oil and gas rows, and roughly 30% of the index is tied to fuel, gas and urea prices. Technology is a single company. There is no pharmaceutical, textile, food or insurance name in the top twenty at all.
That has a direct consequence for anyone screening for Shariah compliance: conventional banks are excluded from the KMI-30 outright, and only Meezan Bank, an Islamic bank, crosses over. A quarter of the KSE-100 is therefore invisible to a halal-only portfolio, which is the main reason the two indices diverge; KSE-100 vs KMI-30 works through the numbers.
What it means when you track the index
If you hold the heavyweights, you are holding the index. A portfolio of FFC, UBL, MEBL, OGDC and HUBC covers 30% of the KSE-100’s weight in five names. Its day-to-day movement will look like the index whether or not you intended that.
If you hold small and mid caps, the KSE-100 says little about you. A constituent weighted at 0.05% could double and the index would not notice. Compare such a portfolio against the All-Share, or simply against the sector indices on the markets page, rather than the headline number.
“100 companies” is not the diversification it sounds like. An index tracker that mirrors the KSE-100 owns a quarter in banks and another quarter in energy and fertiliser, with a long list of names that contribute almost nothing. Knowing the weights tells you which two or three sectors decide your year.
Index points are not rupees. A 1,000-point move sounds dramatic at an index level of 175,000 but is a 0.57% change. Weight tells you which stocks produced it; the percentage tells you how big it was.
Weights move daily, membership moves twice a year
Two different things change. Weights move every trading day, because they are prices multiplied by floats: if banks rally and fertiliser falls, the banking share of the index grows without a single company entering or leaving. Membership changes only at recomposition, which PSX carries out periodically, typically twice a year, under rules published on psx.com.pk. Free-float figures are also reviewed, so a company whose sponsor sells down can gain weight without its price moving.
The snapshot in this post is a photograph of 11 September 2026. For the current weights, the KSE-100 hub shows the live index level and the constituents page lists all 100 members with their weights, and each symbol links to its own stock page.
How Equivest helps
The portfolio tracker shows your return next to the KSE-100 by default, and the constituents page gives the weight of every name you hold, so you can see how much of your portfolio is actually “the index” and how much is your own picking. On the markets page, the index list sits next to the sector indices, so a day when banks drove the move is visible at a glance.
Education, not investment advice.