Size matters on the road. Small is not dominating India's car market any more. The share of cars priced up to Rs 5 lakh in the passenger vehicle market has fallen to 10.5 per cent in the first 11 months of 2021-22, compared with 26 per cent in 2018-19 (FY19), the lowest in four years, according to data from industry sources. Even the share of those in the price range between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 7.5 lakh has dropped to 32.4 per cent in the same period, from 34.9 per cent.
Since arraignment under money laundering is a tougher offence, the CBDT hopes it will also overcome its dismal score sheet to prove satisfactorily to the courts that these cases were genuine ones of tax evasion.
HCL Technologies plans to double its fresher hiring for the upcoming financial year (FY23) as attrition continues to inch up. The company said that it will hire 40,000-45,000 freshers for FY23, up from 20,000-22,000 target for FY22. The company also stated that to ease supply-side constraints and to have access to diversified skills, it was expanding into other geographies over the next three-four quarters. "Some of the geographies that we are investing in to source talent include countries like Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Guatemala, Costa Rica. We are also ramping up our presence in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
An aggressive rate hike by the US Fed and the possibility of a recession can trigger a slide in these stocks, which will be a good opportunity to buy from a long-term perspective.
Investors are pushing back more often against companies' resolutions on what is paid out to top executives. In the first four months of financial year 2022-23 (FY23), there have already been five such rejections, according to shareholder voting data from tracker Adrian, a platform maintained by the proxy advisory firm Institutional Investor Advisory Services India (IiAS). Two of these have been at multiplex chain PVR and direct-to-home company Dish TV India.
Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL) - the market leader in small cars - is eyeing the top spot in the sports utility vehicle (SUV) segment within a year - with a 33 per cent share of the pie. The company has been selling two SUVs - the Brezza and the Grand Vitara - and will start deliveries of the Jimny and the Fronx from March-end, and has set a target of growing its share from the current 11.5 per cent of the SUV market to 33 per cent by the end of 2023-24. The SUV segment is roughly about 42 per cent of the total passenger vehicle market, or around 1.3 million units.
Attrition is driving the hiring effort on campuses.
Kinetic Engineering (KEL), the makers of the iconic Luna two-wheelers in the seventies, will soon start producing components for an electric version of the moped. Pune-based Kinetic said in September that Luna would make a comeback in an electric avatar. The electric Luna, or E-Luna, will be launched by KEL's sister company Kinetic Green Energy and Power Solutions.
Starting with the third quarter of financial year 2020-21 (Q3FY21), we have seen "unlock" trades at various times. Whenever lockdowns have been eased, traders have taken long positions in consumer-facing businesses. Let's look at the logic. Since March 2020, sectors like retail, personal vehicles, hospitality, aviation, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), multiplexes, etc., have been under severe pressure. As a result, there's been a low base effect. Every company in these spaces has suffered top line contraction. Many suffered losses, especially in the first half of FY21.
Japanese tech investor SoftBank may end up investing around $1 billion in India in 2022, nearly a third of what it did last year, according to people closely tracking its plans. Last year, SoftBank undertook investments of $3.2 billion in 12 deals. In the first five months of CY22, the giant investor has invested $400-500 million in five deals.
Corporate earnings grew in double digits during the April-June 2022 (Q1FY23) quarter but the momentum waned. Overall corporate earnings in the quarter were down sharply from their highs in FY22. The combined net profit of 2,981 listed companies across sectors in the Business Standard sample was up 22.4 per cent YoY to Rs 2.24 trillion in the June quarter, driven by a big jump in the earnings of banks, non-banking lenders, oil & producers, and FMCG companies. Also, earnings in the corresponding quarter a year ago were affected because of the second wave of the Covid pandemic, even though the numbers were a lot better than Q1FY21 when there was a nationwide lockdown.
State-owned oil firms such as ONGC and IOC will invest over Rs 1.11 lakh crore in the next fiscal year starting April as they supplement the government's massive spending programme to spur economic growth. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), GAIL (India) Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) will together make a 7.4 per cent higher capital expenditure in the 2022-23 fiscal (FY23). The capex spending of Rs 1.11 lakh crore in 2022-23 compares with a revised estimate of Rs 1.04 lakh crore for the current fiscal year that ends in March, according to Union budget documents.
Go-getter, ambitious, dynamic, workaholic are some of the adjectives that officials who worked closely with B V R Subrahmanyam use to describe him.
Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI), India's second-largest two-wheeler maker, on Wednesday revealed its electric vehicle (EV) roadmap, which includes setting up a dedicated EV factory, launching the first two EVs in 2023-24, and establishing 6,000 battery exchange points in the country. HMSI plans to establish a specialised unit for the manufacturing of electric vehicles (EVs), named 'Factory E', at its Narsapura plant located in Karnataka. Factory E will be created by converting an existing production line that currently manufactures internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, said Atsushi Ogata, HMSI managing director and chief executive officer.
RBL Bank's interim chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD) Rajeev Ahuja on Sunday tried to allay concerns around the health of the bank. He said events during the weekend are not linked to RBL's asset quality. The bank said Vishwavir Ahuja, its managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO), had on Saturday proceeded on leave with immediate effect on medical grounds.
Exports had recovered in November to grow at 0.59 per cent from a 12 per cent contraction in October.
Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran on Thursday expressed hope that the economy will maintain the trend growth rate of 6.5 per cent and above for the rest of the years in the current decade. The economy will close the current fiscal logging in a growth of 6.5-7 per cent, he said, citing the projections of private sector analysts, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and international agencies like OECD and the IMF. "This appears to be reasonable at this point in time although we will get the data on the fiscal second quarter in a few days, which will give more clarity on these numbers.
The Indian aviation sector is on the cusp of a change as airlines look to induct a record number of aircraft. This, analysts said, will put the sector on a growth runway, though keeping it viable for only long-term investors. According to Vinit Bolinjkar, head of research at Ventura Securities, expectations of strong air traffic, coupled with low penetration, is the prime reason for a solid long-term outlook.
Despite gold prices hitting record highs, analysts aren't gung-ho about the outlook for gold financiers Muthoot Finance and Manappuram Finance. This, they said, was due to intense competition from banks, coupled with stagnating loan books and likely pressure on margins.
'While we note the very strong cyclical recovery in the economy, we believe there is still uncertainty over medium-term prospects.'
Vedanta investors were jittery on Tuesday as its share price fell and bond yields of its parent firm rose following concerns raised by a rating agency on its capability to repay debt maturing later this year. Shares of the mining and metals major were down by 7 per cent on Tuesday to Rs 268 a piece on the BSE. The company has lost market valuation of 30 per cent in the last one year and 13 per cent since January 1 this year. Yields on the bonds of Vedanta Resources, the parent firm of the BSE-listed Vedanta, shot up to 39.8 per cent - showing investors' rising concern over the group's debt situation
The country's gross domestic product (GDP) is likely to grow at 5.8 per cent in the third quarter of fiscal 2022, according to an SBI's research report- Ecowrap. The country's economy expanded by 8.4 per cent in the second quarter of 2021-22, to cross pre-pandemic levels. However, the GDP growth in July-September period was slower than the 20.1 per cent expansion in the previous quarter.
Consumption of gold is the highest among middle-income households - those with annual income between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 10 lakh - who account for an average of 56 per cent of gold sales over the last five years, according to a nationwide survey conducted by India Gold Policy Centre (IGPC) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). "Per capita consumption is highest among the rich, but total volume still rests with the middle-income group. "With increasing income, there is an increasing propensity to consume gold, although the share of gold in the portfolio does not increase with the same proportion of income," the survey report says.
Fitch Ratings has cut India's economic growth forecast to 8.7 per cent for the current fiscal but raised GDP growth projection for FY23 to 10 per cent, saying the second COVID-19 wave delayed rather than derail the economic recovery. In its APAC Sovereign Credit Overview, Fitch Ratings said India's 'BBB-/Negative' sovereign rating "balances a still-strong medium-term growth outlook and external resilience from solid foreign- reserve buffers, against high public debt, a weak financial sector and some lagging structural factors". The 'Negative' outlook, it said, reflects uncertainty over the debt trajectory following the sharp deterioration in India's public finances due to the pandemic shock.
Fitch Ratings on Monday cautioned that the Indian government has little fiscal headroom at its disposal to respond to possible shocks to growth given the country's lowest investment grade credit rating with a negative outlook. "India's public debt/GDP ratio, at about 87 per cent in FY21, is well above the median of around 60% for 'BBB' rated sovereigns. "We revised the Outlook on India's rating to Negative, from Stable, in June 2020, partly owing to our assumptions about the impact of the pandemic on public finance metrics. "The government has little fiscal headroom at its current rating level to respond to possible shocks to growth," it said in a report.
Industry players said IT hiring was not as strong as it was in 2022. One reason is the high bench IT firms have due to earlier hiring.
Analysts have predicted a 23 per cent volume growth for the auto segment between FY22 and FY25, riding on the company's differentiated EV and SUV plan. M&M is already a market leader with a 36 per cent share in electric three-wheelers, and its Zaheerabad plant in Telangana is ready to cater to demand. In the farm segment, the company plans to focus on niche electric products.
The IT services giant is also slated to hold a board meeting on April 13 and 14, to approve of and take on record the consolidated financial results of the company for the quarter and year ended March 31, 2021. Indian IT majors will be announcing their fourth quarter (Q4) and 2020-21 results starting April 12. At the end of the Q3 FY21 Infosys had cash and investment of $4.5 billion.
The government, it would seem, is reserving its firepower to spend on big-ticket items that will be announced in the Budget, reports Subhomoy Bhattacharjee.
Even as India's passenger-vehicle sales touched a record high of 3.9 million units in 2022-23, growing 27 per cent over the previous financial year, the country's largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL), said on Monday uncertainties in the electronic-component supplies might affect production in FY24. MSIL said the shortage of electronic components had some impact on production in FY23. "The company took all possible measures to minimise the impact.
One thing is for sure: It smacks of the regulator's lack of confidence in the bank's board, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Brokerages expect India Inc to report an upturn in earnings for the March quarter of 2022-23, after a relatively muted showing in the previous two quarters. This growth is expected to be led by banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) companies, FMCG firms, and automobile makers. The combined net profit of the Nifty50 companies (excluding Adani Enterprises) is expected to have grown 15.6 per cent to Rs 1.77 trillion in Q4FY23, from Rs 1.53 trillion a year ago.
Distribution yields could rise, but risk of Covid, higher interest rates remain.
SoftBank-based e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal has deferred its Rs 1,250 crore IPO, joining the list of startups that have decided to shelve their initial public offering (IPO) plans this year. Snapdeal, which competes with Amazon and Flipkart, filed a request this week with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to withdraw its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) amid a sell-off in tech stocks worldwide. "Considering the prevailing market conditions, the company has decided to withdraw the DRHP. The company may reconsider an IPO in the future, depending on its need for growth capital and market conditions," a Snapdeal spokesperson said.
Software major Tata Consultancy Services on Wednesday reported a 14.8 per cent rise in net income to Rs 11,392 crore for the fourth quarter of last fiscal against Rs 9,959 crore in the year-ago period. The country's largest technology services company by market value said its revenue rose 16.9 per cent to Rs 59,162 crore during the reporting season from Rs 50,591 crore a year ago.
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The Supreme Court has appointed its former judge P V Reddi to mediate the dispute between SpiceJet and its former promoter Kalinithi Maran, the airline said on Wednesday. The dispute dates back to 2015, when Maran sold his stake in SpiceJet of 58.46 per cent, or 50.4 million shares, to Ajay Singh for Rs 2 after the airline suffered financial trouble. A year later, Maran approached the Delhi high court, alleging a breach of agreement by Singh for not issuing him 189 million share warrants and preference shares despite Maran's Rs 679-crore infusion.
The 62 per cent increase in natural gas prices by the Indian government will boost the profitability of upstream companies in the country and support their investment spending, Fitch Ratings said on Tuesday. The price for gas from fields that were assigned by the state to oil companies, mainly Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL), increased to $2.90 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) for October 2021-March 2022, from $1.79 per mmBtu in the previous six months. "Higher gas prices will increase the input cost for key end-consumer sectors, to the extent the price hike is passed on," Fitch said.
Tata Group-owned AirAsia India, which is in the process of being merged with Air India Express, has taken short-term loans worth Rs 630 crore during the last six months to deal with cash crunch. AirAsia India has been making losses since its first commercial flight on June 12, 2014. Its net loss increased by 42 per cent to Rs 2,178 crore in FY22.
Mihir Tanna, Associate Director, S K Patodia & Associates, will answer your personal income tax queries.
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