Spectrum auction took off on Wednesday from Rs 58,980.29 crore (Rs 589.80 billion) mark with demand for the premium 900 Mhz band seemingly tapering off at the end of 56 rounds.
India's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank has hit the Chinese debt market for a benchmark issue of about $500 million.
Muted quarterly earnings, mixed cues from global markets and unabated foreign fund outflows added to the volatility
After a two year run-in with controversies, telecom sector now looks stable and seems back on its feet with initial investment proposal of over Rs 11,000 crore (Rs 110 billion) received in 2013.
Just a few weeks ago, Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw did some tough talking with the senior managers of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, the ailing state-owned telecom service provider. The message was clear: They had to perform, quit by taking the voluntary retirement package or be compulsorily retired from service. The terse message from an otherwise polite and soft-spoken minister came just days after he announced a second and bigger package of Rs 1.64 trillion as part of a four-year turnaround plan for BSNL.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Seeking urgent steps by mobile operators to check call drops, regulator TRAI on Wednesday said their performance would be reviewed after 15 days and warned it will "cross the bridge" if they fail to do the needful.
The Sensex soared 402 points higher to end at 25,720 and the Nifty surged 130 points to close at 7,819.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Bharti Airtel , RCom and Tata Communications ended down between 0.1-1%.
Mukesh Ambani's Jio, high debt and some bad decisions drove RCom to its grave.
T N Ninan lists a few David-Goliath encounters in the Indian markets, all of which make life interesting, though difficult if you are an investor looking for the next multi-bagger.
'The announcement has come too late. This should have been done years ago.'
Ambani brothers on Wednesday showered lavish praises on Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying, India has now got a decisive and visionary leader.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
The decline was led by index heavyweight Reliance Industries along with ITC and HDFC.
Manoj Sinha will retain his current role in the railways.
The programme has triggered a huge debate in India.
The group began to outperform the broader market only with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 while earlier it was largely keeping pace with the Sensex. The group's market cap is up 164.4 per cent since the end of March 2020 against a 105 per cent rally in the Sensex.
The broader markets, however, outperformed their larger peers.
Sensex rises, Nifty holds 8,900; FMCG, Pharma shares lead.
'If you look at voice and data realisations in India, they are the lowest in the world.'
BSE Bankex and Telecom indices led the fall.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries:
India's first auction of spectrum in five years attracted Rs 77,146 crore of bids on the opening day on Monday with Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea participating in the bidding process - a response that the government said was better than expected. There were, however, no takers for spectrum in 700 MHz and 2500 MHz bands on the first day, and the auctions will continue and conclude on Tuesday. About 2,308.80 MHz of spectrum, that carry telecom signals, in seven bands worth nearly Rs 4 lakh crore at the reserve or start price, was offered for bidding in the auction that began on Monday. Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Rs 77,146 crore worth of spectrum was bid on the first day but there were no takers for the airwaves in the premium 700 MHz as also 2500 MHz bands.
While lower gas output led to earnings cuts, price rises with regular ramp-ups in output will lead to earnings upgrades
On a weekly basis, the Sensex climbed 749.86 points or 2.69 per cent and the NSE Nifty soared 237.10 points or 2.76 per cent
After 3 weeks of consecutive rally, this week was a breather for the index, which corrected by almost 1.5%.
The fear of another scam pushed the government into a rather long period of so-called 'policy paralysis'. To play it safe, the price of spectrum in all subsequent auctions was benchmarked to the high 3G rates, says Surajeet Das Gupta.
A daily ceiling of Rs 3 translates into maximum annual penalty of Rs 1,095 for every subscriber.
Benchmark indices failed to sustain gains and retreated from day's high dragged primarily by the losses in metals, information technology and bank shares as investors started to book profits in late noon deals. Earlier, markets had scaled fresh all-time highs on the surprise post-budget rate cut by Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The 30-share Sensex ended down 213 points at 29,380 and the 50-share Nifty closed down 74 points at 8,922. Intra-day, Sensex reached the all-time high mark of 30,024.74 while Nifty touched the life-time high level of 9,119.20. In the broader market, both the BSE Midcap index and Smallcap indices, down 1% and 1.2% each underperformed the front-liners. Market breadth in BSE ended negative with 1,882 declines against 1,010 advances. A day after signing an agreement with Finance Ministry on inflation targeting, RBI surprised the markets with an early post-budget repo rate cut of 25 bps (basis points) to 7.5% from 7.75% which was again outside of central bank's scheduled policy review meetings as the earlier rate cut effected on January 15. "RBI's latest rate cut of 25 basis points, while a surprise in its timing is in-line with our expectations of a sharp rate-cutting cycle over the coming quarters. With inflation sustainably lower by 500bps, the RBI has in recent months acknowledged the scope for rate cuts and was only waiting for additional comfort that the government's fiscal policy would not play spoil-sport," said Dinesh Thakkar, chairman and managing director at Angel Broking in a note. Analysts at Karvy believe that further monetary policy action will depend on number of factors including easing of supply constraints, improved availability of power, land, minerals and infrastructure, fiscal consolidation, the pass through of rate cuts by banks and the expected monsoon. Citing weakness in some sectors of the economy and the overall global trend towards monetary easing as rationale for the rate cut the central bank also exuded confidence in the road map for fiscal consolidation as laid out in the Union Budget, 2015. Commenting on how the markets reacted to RBI's surprise move, K Subramanyam assistant vice-president (institutional research), Asit C. Mehta Securities said, "The unexpected cut did take the market by surprise .However, credit off-take is not dependant only on interest rates. A gradual revival in the economy would be of more help which would trigger credit off-take. Hopefully this will follow and RBI's action would prove helpful. From market point of view this is bullish as equity becomes more attractive vis-a-vis falling interest rates." On the macro-economic front, the HSBC services PMI rose to an eight-month high of 53.9 in February up from 52.4 in January indicating strong expansion in output across the sector. Respondents cited robust growth of new business as the principle factor for the increase in activity. Meanwhile, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 773 crore on Tuesday, as per provisional data. Buzzing Stocks 9 out of the 12 sectoral indices of BSE ended in red. BSE Metal index, down 2.4% was the top loser followed by BSE Oil & Gas and Power indices, down 1.3% each. BSE Healthcare index, up 1.2% and BSE FMCG index, up 0.9% were the top losers. Bank stocks came under during late noon trades as traders booked profits at higher levels. However, RBI rate cut may encourage large lenders to cut their lending rates boosting demand for home and auto loans and provide funds for various stalled and new projects. Many stalled projects across the country are waiting for cash to restart work. The stock of stalled projects at the end of December 2014 stood at Rs 8.8 lakh crore or 7% of GDP. ICICI Bank ended down 0.1%, Axis Bank and SBI declined over 3% and HDFC Bank shed 1.5%. Sun Pharma gained over 6% on approval granted to Sun Pharma Advanced Research Company (SPARC) by US FDA for an antiepileptic drug. The product will be manufactured by Sun Pharmaceutical Industries at its Halol (Gujarat) facility in India. SPARC was formed in 2007 when Sun Pharma separated out its active projects in drug discovery and innovation into a new company. Dr Reddys Lab and Cipla have gained over 1% each. ITC gained over 1% after consecutive sessions of losses on the proposed larger-than-expected hike in excise duty on cigarettes in the Union Budget. The biggest ever auction of spectrum by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) started on Wednesday in the morning where government expects to garner Rs 80,000-1lakh crore from the sale of spectrum. Idea Cellular gained over 2%, Reliance Communication gained around 1% and Bharti Airtel closed 0.5% higher. Metal stocks were under pressure in today's session. Hindalco declined over 3%, Sesa Sterliteended down over 4% and Tata Steel closed down 2%. Profit-taking in IT stocks led to Wipro losing around 1.8%, Infosys declining 0.7% and TCS losing 1.5%.
In August, RBI allowed 11 business houses to start a payments bank.
Top 5 losers include Infosys, TCS, ITC, M&M and HUL.
Lt Governor says discoms must cooperate or face cancellation of licences. Ficci cries interference.
In its letter Voda Idea has warned that it is not in a sound financial state, and added that it would be in a position to meet its liabilities only if the government initiates steps including allowing set-offs for GST credit accumulated so far, and permitting staggered mechanism for payment of balance amount of interest, penalty, and interest on penalty.
Its pre-consultation paper has been silent on the issue of closed electronic communication network, a loophole telcos can exploit to offer discriminatory pricing.
Inflation is down, growth is headed for recovery. RIL and subsidiary Jio are on an upswing. However, stressed loans and impending job losses are the dark clouds, says Devangshu Datta.
Foreign institutional investors were net buyers in Indian equities worth Rs 277.92 crore on Tuesday
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
FIIs pump in Rs 2,075 crore in past three trading sessions.
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