'The upcoming long weekend has ignited strong travel intent, with robust bookings across leisure, spiritual and wellness destinations.'
Travellers are turning concerts into full-fledged weekend getaways, giving rise to the 'gigcation' -- a short, experience-led micro-holiday.
Sanjiv Puri, chairman and managing director of ITC, is looking to expand the conglomerate's play outside India by taking "strategic positions" in markets close to home in the non-cigarette fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and hospitality businesses. In a recent conversation with Business Standard, Puri revealed that ITC is setting sights beyond India's borders. "We already export to 100-odd countries. We want to scale that up and take some strategic positions in markets close to us," he said.
ITC stock slipped over 4 per cent on Thursday (February 8) after British American Tobacco (BAT) said it could sell some of its stake in the company, recovering partially in trade. The stock of the cigarette-to-hotels conglomerate traded at Rs 420 levels, rising 1.3 per cent in intraday deals as compared to the S&P BSE Sensex that traded flat for most part of the day. The development, meanwhile, saw Jefferies downgrade the stock to 'hold' from 'buy' earlier with a target price of Rs 430, down a huge 17.3 per cent from its earlier price target of Rs 520.
In October 2024, Jindal Stainless challenged a Goods and Services Tax (GST) notice in the Delhi high court. It was about corporate guarantees issued to related parties by its former group company, Jindal Stainless (Hisar), before their merger in March 2023.
British multinational BAT PLC on Tuesday said it plans to sell up to 3.5 per cent stake in India's ITC Ltd to institutional investors through a block trade. In a statement, British American Tobacco PLC (BAT), the single largest shareholder in ITC Ltd (ITC), said its wholly-owned subsidiary Tobacco Manufacturers (India) Ltd (TMI) intends to sell up to 43,68,51,457 ordinary shares in the Indian diversified entity to institutional investors by way of an accelerated bookbuild process (block trade), subject to customary closing conditions.
'While every year presents new challenges, it also provides opportunities for better growth and performance.'
Daily essentials and food products will be cheaper from Monday, as leading FMCG companies have slashed prices, extending GST cut benefits to consumers.
Indian cricket fans, who love turning up for IPL matches across the country, will have to shell out more for tickets next season with government raising the Goods and Services Tax.
Stock markets are in for an event-heavy week ahead with a raft of Q1 earnings from blue-chips, the US Fed interest rate decision and foreign investors trading activity driving investors' sentiment, analysts said. Macroeconomic data announcements, monthly auto sales numbers and global market trends would also guide movement in the domestic equities, they said.
Diversified entity ITC Ltd on Monday said it will demerge its hotels business by incorporating wholly-owned subsidiary ITC Hotels Ltd, paving way to attract appropriate investors and strategic partners. With the company's hotels business maturing over the years, the company said the vertical is ready to chart its own growth path as a separate entity in the fast-growing hospitality industry. "The Board of Directors of ITC Ltd at its meeting held on July 24, 2023, evaluated and discussed various alternative structures for the hotels business.
A young couple sharing a laugh - in the living room over a Polish joke book, on the beach, in the rain - with the tagline, "Made for each other", hung from billboards at prominent street corners from the 1960s to the 1990s. It was a campaign for one of the largest selling cigarette brands in India, Wills (Navy Cut) from the ITC stable, that resonated with a generation of smokers and non-smokers alike till the curtains came down on tobacco advertising in 2004. As we prepare to welcome 2024, ITC has metamorphosed from a tobacco giant into a conglomerate straddling multiple large-sized businesses. In the mind space of Gen Z or millennials, the company represents a gamut of branded products - from frozen food (ITC Master Chef), noodles (YiPPee!), and cookies (Sunfeast) to snacks (Bingo!) and notebooks (Classmate), and so on and so forth.
Equity benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty fell on Friday, extending their downward journey to the third day, as investors continued to reel under pressure caused by the imposition of high tariffs and relentless foreign fund outflows.
Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) , the country's largest domestic institutional investor (DII), has seen a Rs 46,000 crore erosion in the value of its equity holdings amid market downturns in July. The benchmark indices, Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex, have slipped 2.6 per cent from their June 2025-end level to 24,837 and 81,463.09 respectively.
ITC highlighted that legal cigarettes account for 9 per cent of tobacco consumption in India, but 80 per cent of tax collection is from tobacco products. While illicit cigarettes account for roughly one-third of the market share, legal cigarette volumes have recovered to around 96 per cent of peak FY13 volumes, after dipping to 70 per cent in FY21.
EducationUSA is hosting free Study In The US fairs across India from August 9-17 for aspiring undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students interested in studying in the US.
Some of the key names include: Maruti, M&M, Ashok Leyland, Britannia, Ultratech, JK Cement, Havells, Voltas, Amber, Metro, Trent, LemonTree, Indian Hotels, Niva Bupa, HDFC Life, IGL, Acme Solar, Suzlon, Swiggy, Delhivery, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance, Shriram Finance," according to a report by Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
Simplifying GST rates, removing exemptions, easing disputes, and speeding up refunds can boost investment in India and offer the best reply to Trump's tariffs, observes V S Krishnan, former member, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs.
A hotel in 1975, entry into paperboards in 1979, India's dominant cigarette maker, ITC, read the tea - or tobacco - leaves early, leveraged its enterprise strengths and stepped up the diversification agenda to create multiple drivers of growth. Some failed, some faltered, some were transformational, adding steadily to the top line. Now those efforts are making a difference: margins from non-cigarettes - FMCG, hotels, agri, paperboards, paper and packaging - are expanding and profits are kicking in more significantly than ever before.
ITC's move to demerge the hotel business into a new entity, ITC Hotels Ltd, is a step in the right direction and will allay investor's concerns on the company's capital allocation strategy in the medium-to-long term, said analysts at Morgan Stanley in a note. According to the company, the board of directors has approved in principle the demerger of the hotels business, wherein ITC will hold a 40 per cent stake in the new entity, and the remaining 60 per cent will be held directly by shareholders. The scheme of arrangement shall be placed for approval of the Board at its next meeting to be convened on 14th August 2023.
The resolution seeking his reappointment as chairman and managing director of the diversified conglomerate will be put to vote at the company's annual general meeting to be held on August 11, 2023, according to a notice sent to the shareholders on Tuesday. The company under Puri drove the 'ITC Next' strategy in the last four years encompassing digital acceleration, cost optimisation, investing in new growth vectors and ensuring supply chain agility, its officials said.
'That is going to have an impact on literally every one, whether you buy a toothpaste, a safety pin, a car, shoes or medicines or you go to a diagnostic centre.'
Target prices around Rs 400 suggest a significant upside.
India's hospitality sector is rolling out the red carpet for investors. A flurry of upcoming IPOs, or initial public offerings, the entry of new players, and ambitious expansion plans by Indian and global hotel brands are ushering in what could be the industry's most formalised era yet. Leading the charge are real estate titans, who are turning their hotel arms into global hospitality chains.
Titan, HCL Tech and State Bank of India were also among the laggards. However, Hindustan Unilever, Asian Paints, ICICI Bank, Power Grid, HDFC Bank and ITC were the gainers.
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has set aside the penalty imposed on multi-conglomerate ITC by fair trade regulator CCI for not notifying for the acquisition of brands 'Savlon' and 'Shower to Shower' in 2017. ITC had 2017 acquired the antiseptic brand Savlon and the personal care product brand Shower To Shower from Johnson & Johnson Private. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) had on December 11, 2017, imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on ITC for alleged failure to give notice under sub-section 2 of Section 6 of the Competition Act.
The proposed 'Next Gen GST' with sweeping reforms, lower tax rates, and just two slabs, aims to boost the economy amid tariff threats and set the stage for a single tax rate regime by the time India becomes a developed nation, government sources said.
Stock markets will be mainly driven by quarterly earnings by corporates, foreign fund flows and global trends this week, analysts said.
Equity benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty tumbled in early trade on Monday amid heightened tensions in the Middle East after the US bombed three major nuclear sites in Iran. The 30-share BSE Sensex tumbled 705.65 points to 81,702.52 in early trade. The 50-share NSE Nifty dropped 182.85 points to 24,929.55.
Diversified entity ITC Ltd on Thursday reported a 22.66 per cent rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 5,225.02 crore in the fourth quarter ended March 2023, led by a strong growth momentum across operating segments. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 4,259.68 crore a year ago, ITC Ltd said in a regulatory filing. Its revenue from operations increased 7 per cent to Rs 18,799.18 crore in the period under review against Rs 17,754.02 crore in the year-ago period.
Eternal was the biggest gainer in the Sensex pack, jumping 4.50 per cent, followed by Power Grid, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, UltraTech Cement, Adani Ports, Sun Pharma, ITC and Hindustan Unilever were also among the winners. In contrast, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank, Bajaj Finserv and Bajaj Finance were among the laggards.
'...than by the calendar.' Indian travellers are no longer restricting their getaways to summer or winter holidays.
Promoters of India's top private listed companies have cut their stakes sharply since 2021, taking advantage of elevated valuations and reshaping ownership dynamics in the market. Holdings of promoters in the top 200 privately owned listed firms declined nearly 600 basis points (bps) to 37 per cent at the end of FY25, from 43 per cent in FY21.
The combined market valuation of the top-ten most valued firms jumped by a whopping Rs 3,84,004.73 crore in the holiday-shortened last week, in-tandem with a smart rally in equities, with HDFC Bank and Bharti Airtel emerging as the biggest gainers. Last week, the BSE benchmark Sensex jumped 3,395.94 points or 4.51 per cent, and the NSE Nifty surged 1,023.1 points or 4.48 per cent.
One of Debashish Bhattacharya's most remarkable contributions is that he has taken the scope and foundation of the slide guitar, improvised it again and again, thereby designing and creating four entirely new guitars.
With the rise of wellness tourism and experiential travel, specialised jobs are being created in spa management, event planning and local experience curation, besides social media management.
Jane Street could do what they did because of the most fundamental flaw in the Indian stock market: a fragmented, fractured, fissured, fistula-ed liquidity stream, points out Shankar Sharma.
The "asset-right" strategy, reiterated by ITC chairman Sanjiv Puri during the company's 112th annual general meeting (AGM) on August 11, received a thumbs up from the analysts. They, however, believe that sustained earnings growth and synergies with the demerged hotel's vertical will help the stock break out from the ongoing consolidation. "The stock is expected to consolidate between Rs 420 and Rs 450 in the near future.
ITC's results for the January-March quarter (Q4) were strong, with robust growth in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) segment and a good performance in hospitality. The tobacco division's performance was on expected lines, with double-digit volume growth, helped by reclaiming of market share from the smuggled trade. There was 60 per cent growth in non-cigarette earnings before interest and tax (Ebit), despite a relatively weak performance in paperboards.
ITC Ltd on Friday reported a 23.09 per cent increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 5,070.09 crore for the third quarter ended December 2022, helped by growth momentum across its operating segments. The diversified company had posted a net profit of Rs 4,118.80 crore during the October-December quarter of the previous fiscal, ITC said in a regulatory filing. Its revenue from operations was up 3.56 per cent to Rs 19,020.65 crore during the quarter under review, as against Rs 18,365.80 crore in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.
