The queue for mutual fund (MF) licences has thinned down due to quick clearances by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) alongside applications being withdrawn amid regulatory changes. There were, at the end of September, only two pending MF applications: By AngelOne and Unifi Capital. By comparison, there were 11 applications lying before the market regulator at the start of calendar year 2023.
Besides the national capital, polling for the sixth round of the marathon seven-phase elections will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.
'Investors need to be stock specific and should not rush to buy stocks at the current levels.'
The recent price correction in broader markets has hit cement companies hard. So far in the current month, smallcap firms like Visaka Industries, Andhra Cements NCL Industries, Sahyadri Industries, and KCP have lost 19.7 per cent, 14.3 per cent, 13.8 per cent, 13.5 per cent, and 11.5 per cent, respectively. On the contrary, largecap companies, while registering losses for the month, have seen a softer blow.
Notwithstanding the recent sharp decline in the stocks of public sector companies, analysts at Jefferies remain bullish on this segment. State Bank of India, Coal India, and NTPC are their top picks in this space, they said in a recent note. The public sector undertaking (PSU) or state-owned enterprise (SOE) index, with a 70-percentage-point outperformance versus the National Stock Exchange Nifty50 over the past 12 months, comes after a decade of underperformance before 2020.
On average, at least one in three Indians today were pre-diabetic, two in three were pre-hypertensive and one in 10 were depressed, the 4th edition of Apollo Hospitals' flagship Health of Nation Report on World Health Day 2024, said.
Stock markets will be driven by quarterly earnings by index majors, global trends and the RBI's interest rate decision this week after digesting news on budget proposals and US Federal policy outcome, say analysts. The trading activity of foreign investors and the movement of global oil benchmark Brent crude would also dictate trends in equities. "On the domestic front, the MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) meeting is scheduled from February 6-8.
Tata Power saw a big sell-off, with the stock falling almost 8 per cent after declaring disappointing results for the October-December quarter (Q3) of 2023-24 (FY24) on Friday evening. The company reported net consolidated revenue of Rs 14,650 crore, up 4.4 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (Ebitda) of Rs 2,607 crore, up 2 per cent Y-o-Y, in the quarter, led by higher sales across Odisha distribution companies (discoms) and capacity addition in renewables. This was well below consensus estimates.
Reliance Group, recently, accused L&T Finance and Edelweiss Group entities of "illegal" and "motivated" actions in invoking the pledged shares of Anil Ambani group's three listed firms and selling them in open market causing a steep fall in share values.
Byju's is in talks with three-four strategic buyers, including Joffre Capital Ltd and language learning platform Duolingo, to sell one of its key assets, US-based digital reading platform Epic, for about $400-$450 million, according to sources. With this, the beleaguered edtech firm wants to meet various commitments, including repaying its entire $1.2 billion term loan B (TLB) within six months. "The binding offers of the bidders to acquire Epic are expected to come in the next few weeks after the due diligence is complete," said a person familiar with the matter.
Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) is one of the largest beneficiaries of the defence indigenisation programme. The aerospace Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) has just received a new tender for 97 Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas Mk1A, and it is already servicing an earlier order for 83 LCA aircraft. The new order is worth around Rs 65,000 crore with a 65 per cent indigenisation component, whereas the earlier order (February 21) was worth Rs 45,700 crore with 55 per cent indigenisation.
SBI Cards & Payment Services reported mixed results for the January-March quarter (Q4) of FY24. While it managed to deliver strong earnings growth, it saw a perceptible decline in net interest margin (NIM) and suffered deteriorating asset quality. Taken together, the market was disappointed with the share dropping 3.5 per cent.
Active largecap funds, which have the toughest job in terms of outperforming the benchmark, did better in 2023 as their bets in the mid and smallcap stocks paid off.
Understand the pros and cons of SGBs before rushing to invest in them based on past returns.
The share of foreign loans in total Adani group debt portfolio dropped to 61 per cent by September 2023 from 63 per cent as of March 2023, as the group repaid part of its foreign loans and refinanced part of older loans. The share of Indian lenders, on the other hand, rose to 39 per cent in the total debt pie in September 2023 from 37 per cent in March after a report by US-based short seller Hindenburg Research in January last year, which led to volatility in the share prices of group companies. The group's total debt remained static at Rs 2.26 trillion in the same period.
'There is a huge tax differential of 15% to 20% depending on income classification.'
Why did the company zero in on RBL Bank to understand the business of banking? While the M&M investors heaved a sigh of relief, one gentleman must have been all smiles after this, RBL Bank MD and CEO R Subramaniakumar, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
BlackRock has again reduced the valuation of its share in edtech firm Byju's - this time to about $1 billion, TechCrunch reported on Friday, citing disclosures made by the US-based asset manager. This is 95 per cent less than its peak valuation of $22 billion in 2022. The markdown comes at a time when the company is facing a multitude of challenges, including securing fresh capital, delays in financial reporting and legal disputes with lenders.
CSK, with their experience of winning important moments, will certainly make Capitals wary.
Her reasoning is simple, "It's a Tata company. No shareholder will let go of this opportunity," she told Business Standard. When asked if the other reason for lining up for the IPO is the technology sector and the fact that the combination of Tata and tech is happening after almost two decades, she replied: "The name of the company and the group matter. Tata means stability and credibility," she added.
Tech Mahindra was the biggest loser in the Sensex pack, slipping 4.59 per cent, followed by Asian Paints, Wipro, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bajaj Finserv, Infosys, ITC, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever, IndusInd Bank, Reliance Industries and JSW Steel. In contrast, Larsen & Toubro, Bharti Airtel, Power Grid and Axis Bank were among the gainers.
Among Sensex shares, Bajaj Finserve, ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel, Bajaj Finance, Sun Pharma, Maruti Suzuki, ITC, and Nestle were the lead gainers. On the other hand, L&T Wipro, IndusInd Bank and TCS and Tata Motors were the lead losers.
Rajan said he believes that capitalism is breaking down because it is not providing equal opportunities.
'Planning for the transfer of assets to the next generation is an important aspect of financial and estate planning.'
With Pant back in action, the Delhi Capitals can anticipate a boost in their batting prowess
Shares of low-cost airline IndiGo hit record high on the bourses soon after reports of pilot crisis at Vistara emerged. The development also saw airfares surge by around 25 per cent on select routes. Shares of IndiGo hit a lifetime high of ~3,68.5 on April 2, 2024, and has gained 2.4 per cent on the bourses in April.
Public-sector enterprise stocks have seen a good run thus far in 2023-24 (FY24), with the S&P BSE PSU Index surging by over 26 per cent during the period, compared to an 11 per cent increase in the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex.
India's industrial production growth slowed to 3.8 per cent in December 2023, mainly due to poor performance of mining and power generation segments, according to official data released on Monday. The factory output growth measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) was at 5.1 per cent in December 2022. In November last year, IIP growth stood at 2.4 per cent.
The decision by the Reserve Bank of India to introduce a unified regulatory framework on connected lending for all the regulated entities (RE) is expected to reduce the influence of business conglomerates in the Indian lending space, said bankers and experts. "Connected lending pertains to lending to related parties within the same business group. "While the RBI might appear more agreeable to allowing business conglomerates to own banking licenses, it deems it crucial to bolster regulations that would prevent conglomerate-owned banks from gaming the system," said Shivaji Thapliyal, head of research and lead analyst, YES Securities.
The increase in India's military spending was "mainly a result of growing personnel and operations costs" which made up almost 80 percent of the total military budget in 2023, the SIPRI report claimed.
S&P Global Ratings has upgraded its long-term ratings on Tata Motors to speculative grade 'BB' with stable outlook on earnings improvements and potential deleveraging. The ratings agency had earlier placed Tata Motors in 'BB-'. As per S&P ratings, a BB grade is less vulnerable in the near-term but faces major ongoing uncertainties to adverse business, financial and economic conditions.
Continuing on the fiscally prudent path, the Modi government in the interim Budget refrained from announcing populist measures, which will help it trim the fiscal deficit to 5.1 per cent of the GDP next fiscal and 4.5 per cent in FY26.
India will drive growth in the Asia-Pacific (Apac) region as the growth engine is likely to shift from China to South and Southeast Asia in the coming years, S&P Global Ratings said in a report on Tuesday. The rating agency's report projected China's growth to slow down to 4.6 per cent by 2026 from an estimated 5.4 per cent in 2023. India is likely to clock 7 per cent economic growth from 6.4 per cent estimated for 2023.
While tenants can't escape the impact of rising rentals entirely, they can adopt a few strategies to reduce the impact.
The sharp rally in the markets thus far in fiscal 2023-24 (FY24) has left analysts struggling to find investment-worthy themes. The S&P BSE Sensex has surged nearly 7 per cent thus far in FY24 and hit a fresh 52-week high of 63,601.71 levels on June 22, mostly led by foreign institutional (FII) flows. "The Indian market has seen a broad rally in the past few months but headline indices have seen more modest performance. "We are not very clear about the reasons for the rally and the divergent performance and struggle to find ideas in the consumption, investment and outsourcing sectors after the sharp run-up in several of our favored sectors and stocks in the past two months," wrote Sanjeev Prasad, co-head, Kotak Institutional Equities, in a recent co-authored note with Anindya Bhowmik and Sunita Baldawa.
Jaishankar arrived in Maputo from Uganda where he held talks with the country's top leadership, including President Yoweri Museveni, and discussed possible cooperation in the areas of trade, infrastructure, energy and defence.
If they are made accountable, bad loan cases will shrink dramatically, recoveries will rise, and the NCLT process will be more manageable, asserts Debashis Basu.
'Genuine' share transfer gets relief; CBDT lists three scenarios where tax would be levied
Stocks of public sector undertakings (PSUs) have been on fire in the past year as investors cheered an improvement in key operating metrics and embraced counters of these state-owned enterprises, analysts suggest. The S&P BSE PSU Index has gained over 90 per cent in the past year, rising much higher than the S&P BSE Sensex, which has rose nearly 19 per cent during this period, according to ACE Equity data. The BSE PSU Index, reports show, has delivered a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28 per cent (including dividends reinvestments) over five years and risen by almost 60 per cent in the past year.
Among the Sensex firms, Nestle rose the most by 4.66 per cent. NTPC rose by 2.16 per cent, Reliance Industries by 1.53 per cent, State Bank of India by 1.04 per cent and Hindustan Unilever by 1.03 per cent. ITC, Power Grid and Bajaj Finance were the major gainers. Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, HCL Technologies, Tata Steel, Bajaj Finserv and Maruti were among the laggards.