Thirteen companies have joined the Rs 1-trillion-plus market capitalisation club this year, so far. This even as the benchmark Sensex has gained less than 3 per cent on a year-to-date basis, underscoring the bullish undercurrent in the broader market. The trend shows a harsh second wave of Covid-19, subsequent lockdowns, and hit to the economic activity has made little dent into India Inc or shareholders' wealth. At the start of the year, there were 29 companies with a market value of more than Rs 1 trillion.
Asia's richest man Gautam Adani, besides looking at opportunities to expand his vast empire, is hooked on ChatGPT - the programme that trawls vast amount of information to generate natural-sounding text on virtually anything - from crafting jokes to writing ad copy, debugging computer code, to even generating poems and essays. Adani, whose conglomerate has in recent years diversified from mines, ports and power plants into airports, data centres and defence, penned musing from his visit to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum meeting. "From a meetings perspective, this was perhaps my busiest WEF as I met over a dozen heads of states and several business leaders," he wrote on LinkedIn, talking of new geopolitical couplings, climate change and tight-lipped evangelists and AI.
Billionaire Gautam Adani's Group on Wednesday announced the acquisition of SoftBank Group Corp's renewable power business in India for a deal value of $3.5 billion (approximately Rs 25,500 crore), to become the world's largest solar company. In a statement, Adani Green Energy Ltd, the renewable energy unit of the port-to-energy conglomerate, said it has inked share purchase agreements to buy 100 per cent of SB Energy India from SoftBank and Bharti Group. Without giving deal details, the statement said the transaction values SB Energy India at an enterprise valuation of approximately $3.5 billion, it stated. The transaction marks the largest acquisition in the renewable energy sector in India.
Reliance's big-bang entry across the solar ecosystem will cut dependence on Chinese imports drastically. And Ambani's repeated emphasis that RIL's new energy foray will be 'a truly global business' points that his group is playing not just for a share of the Indian pie but to be the OEM in the larger 5,000 GW global market by 2030, points out Shailesh Dobhal.
Losses largely came from the metal index, followed by power, infrastructure, realty, PSU, oil and gas, capital goods, FMCG, healthcare, auto and banking.
Modi's'Make in India' drive launched last September included laying out a model of "port-led" development that would support industrial growth.
In a departure from its stand, the government has decided to go ahead with the privatisation of the four airports.
The success story of Adani's Mundra Port in Gujarat, in terms of efficiency, technology and management, should be replicated at Vizhinjam to ensure that this ambitious project does not fail, say Shehzad Poonawalla and Riya Sinha.
The Greens are calling for an urgent investigation.
The mine, designed to eventually produce 60 million tonnes a year of thermal coal used in power stations, has been the focus of opposition by green groups fighting new coal mines and the rail and ports needed to ship the coal.
The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government has given environment clearance to five projects since it took charge on May 26.
Queensland's Development Minister Anthony Lynham issued a statement on Sunday, saying the combined mine, rail and associated water infrastructure have all been declared "critical infrastructure" and the project's special "prescribed project" status has been renewed and expanded to include its water infrastructure.
M-Cap of top 10 business groups went up by 46% this year.
The $16.5 billion Carmichael coal mine project when completed would be one of the world's largest.
The key hurdle Adani needs to clear to secure loans for the Carmichael mine, rail and port project is dredging approval to expand its Abbot Point port.
The dollar bond market has been a favourite for Indian firms in 2014.
Top losers in the session included Maruti, Tata Motors, RIL, Yes Bank, Adani Ports, Bharti Airtel, Asian Paints, ONGC, HUL, Kotak Bank, IndusInd Bank and Axis Bank, falling up to 5 per cent.
'Only if the Budget springs some surprises we may see a halt in the selling.'
The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has slapped a Rs 5,500-crore show-cause notice on Adani group for alleged over-valuation of capital equipment imports.
The Adani group struck first coal from its Carmichael, Australia project on Thursday and will start shipping to its customers according to schedule. With this, the project will not only lift the economic prospects of the hitherto barren Australian outback, but also help Indian power plants to source cheap coal. The project had faced protests from a section of population with several banks even refusing to fund it. The group, however, went ahead with the project which included construction of a brand new railway line connecting an Australian port to the mine -- situated 300 kilometers away in Queensland.
The final and last approval for the Adani group's long-delayed billion dollar mega coal mine project came weeks after a surprise election win of Australia's pro-coal ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Adani, which already has mining and environmental licences from the state government, requires the state approvals on management plans on the endangered finch bird and groundwater in order to commence the mine construction.
The stock exchange on which they are traded boasts higher profits than most of the companies whose shares are hitting new highs. Only 37 of approximately 2,000 listed companies with comparable data for 2022-23 (FY23) reported higher profits, while the rest had lower profits. Despite rising corporate profitability, the universe of companies that outperform the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in terms of profitability has been shrinking of late, according to an analysis of companies with comparable data over the past seven years.
The domestic benchmark indices - the S&P BSE Sensex and the National Stock Exchange Nifty50 - had lost close to 1.5 per cent in three days recently before gaining slightly. Notwithstanding weakness and volatility, the Nifty50 has managed to hold on to the 18,000 mark, while the Sensex has managed to stay above the 61,000 level. The performance of the stocks that comprise these front-line indices remains polarised.
Even as banks and finance companies are reporting record-high earnings, their weighting in the benchmark National Stock Exchange Nifty50 Index has seen a downward trajectory. Investors expect a stronger performance from other sectors in the new year. Currently, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) companies collectively hold a weighting of 34.5 per cent, down from 36.7 per cent at the end of December 2022 and a record high of 40.6 per cent at the end of December 2019. This represents the sector's lowest weighting in the index since December 2021 when it stood at 33.7 per cent.
Major gainers in the Sensex pack were Hero Motocorp, which rallied 7.01 per cent, followed by Bharti Airtel (6.69 per cent), Yes Bank (5.30 per cent), Adani Ports (4.90 per cent), Tata Steel (3.75 per cent) and Bajaj Auto (3.70 per cent).
Indian companies had raised $2.39 billion from foreign markets in May 2015.
The S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50 have hit record highs amid the poll outcome-triggered bull frenzy at the bourses. Most analysts feel that the indices are on course to rise further over the next few months - till the general elections - albeit amid intermittent corrections - largely triggered by global developments. Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) win in the three state elections of Madhya Pradesh (MP), Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, analysts at Jefferies believe, reinforces the consensus expectations of a Modi win 2024 national elections with a greater likelihood of over 300 seats for the BJP.
With political parties using him as punching bag in the highly charged election campaign, Adani Group head Gautam Adani on Sunday said he got no special favours from Narendra Modi and his group has since 1993 acquired only barren waste land for infrastructure projects.
The massive coal mine in Queensland state has been a controversial topic, with the project expected to produce 2.3 billion tonnes of low-quality coal.
It announced a Rs 4,400-crore (Rs 44-billion) acquisition of the Dhamra port the day election results gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi a superlative win.
Total, which had a few weeks back exited Royal Dutch Shell-led Hazira LNG import terminal in Gujarat, will join Adani in developing a 5 million tonnes a year import facility at Dhamra in Odisha. The two will also set up a joint venture to roll out a fuel retail network of 1,500 outlets, mostly on highways, in the next 10 years, Adani and Total said in a joint statement.
Terminal Zero will be constructed at the port of Abbot Point near Bowen town, Queensland, as per the Memorandum of Understanding inked between the company and Korea's POSCO.
Since January this year, Indian exporters have begun to dread the shipping news. That's because most of it would be about another lot of shipping companies deciding to avoid Indian ports on account of delays.
Under political fire and ecologists' ire, the group hires Suhel Seth, who will work closely with the promoters and the social media, corporate communications and external public relations team.
Adani intends to ship most of the coal from the mine to India.
The immediate denial of any issues with approvals by the Queensland government raises questions as to what Adani is trying to accomplish
The company has battled opposition from green groups since starting work on the project five years ago
With the Adanis submitting an earnest money deposit (EMD) of just Rs 100 crore on Monday for the upcoming 5G spectrum auction, the apprehension among the rivals that the group is nursing ambitions of being an all-India mobile player has been allayed at least for now. Based on its EMD, analysts say it can buy spectrum worth just Rs 900 crore, whose use will be limited to enterprises and captive networks -- that too is likely only in a few circles where it has its infrastructure like ports, airports, and power stations. While getting all-India millimetre band spectrum of 400 MHz (which costs Rs 2,800 crore) is ruled out, it might choose circles like Gujarat and Mumbai to start with.