'A cutback in hiring and compensation growth by IT companies will have a significant impact on consumer demand, especially in the urban sector of the economy.'
After underperforming its peers in the consumer space in 2022-23, and experiencing a mixed bag in the 2023-24 (FY24) April-June quarter (first quarter, or Q1), brokerages are positive about the medium-term outlook for liquor stocks. Higher raw material costs, concerns regarding increased duties, regulatory changes, and competitive pressures weighed on performance returns in the past quarters. Analysts believe that the sector could experience a reversal of fortunes due to better demand and margin improvements.
Stocks of defence-related companies have been firing on all cylinders on the bourses in calendar year 2023 (CY23). Shares of Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), Bharat Electronics (BEL), Bharat Dynamics (BDL), Data Patterns, MTAR Tech, Cochin Shipyard and GRSE have rallied in the range of 21-96 per cent so far this year. By comparison, the BSE Sensex is up 8 per cent. The gains have been sustained on the back of robust export opportunities, a healthy project pipeline and the government's continued push for local manufacturing and indigenisation of defence equipment.
The affordable housing segment may be seeing an uptick which is a good sign of consumption momentum. This is the biggest-ticket purchase for middle income and lower income families. The current activity is at least partly driven by a pause in interest rate hikes.
At an aggregate level, the late ace investor's portfolio that was valued at Rs 32,445 crore as on March 31, 2023 is now worth Rs 35,979 crore.
From the Sensex pack, Larsen & Toubro jumped 4.26 per cent to emerge as the biggest gainer, followed by IndusInd Bank, Tech Mahindra, State Bank of India, HCL Technologies, Power Grid, NTPC, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank and Wipro. Mahindra & Mahindra, Infosys, UltraTech Cement and Hindustan Unilever were the major laggards.
A muted revenue performance in the September quarter and weak management commentary weighed on the stock of consumer major Marico which shed 8.5 per cent to Rs 542 from its intraday highs on Tuesday. The company indicated that demand trends were similar to that of the June quarter with instances of increasing food prices and below-normal rainfall distribution in some regions impeding the anticipated recovery in rural demand.
UPL, the country's largest agrochemical company, had a weak July-September quarter (Q2), reporting a sharp fall in revenues across geographies. Overall, the revenues were down 19 per cent on the back of lower agrochemical prices and inventory destocking. While the overall volumes were down 7 per cent, prices fell by 15 per cent. Volume decline in the European market was on the back of high channel inventory and product bans while in India the fall by 27 per cent was on account of muted demand for segments such as cotton and pulses.
Among the Sensex firms, ICICI Bank and SBI led the index with the maximum gains of 4.68 per cent and 3.99 per cent, respectively. Other major gainers were Larsen & Toubro, Kotak Mahindra Bank and HDFC Bank. On the other hand, Wipro and Tata Motors defied the trend and traded in negative.
'In the next 15-20 years, India will have at least 50 new (AI-driven) billion-dollar companies that are going to solve problems for the largest companies around the world.'
Altman said he was "looking forward" to returning to his previous role at the AI firm.
People are availing far more of certain kinds of unsecured loans than was the case before the pandemic. Bank lending for buying consumer durables and funding of credit cards and other personal loans have risen by Rs 6.9 trillion between August 2019 and August 2023, shows a Business Standard analysis of data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). These loans are typically unsecured, which means they are provided without collateral.
'When manufacturing or even services cannot generate the kind of employment they are looking for, they prefer to be unemployed rather than under-employed.'
Hygienic owns Super Vasmol and Streax brands of hair colour products.
Two full-fledged semiconductor fabrication plants are going to come up in India very soon entailing multi-billion dollar investment besides several chip assembly and packaging units, Minister of Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said. In an interview with PTI, the minister confirmed that the two projects include a $8 billion proposal submitted by Israel-based Tower Semiconductors and the other from Tata Group. "I am happy to share this with you and you are probably the first one I'm sharing this with.
'No human bias is involved as happens in active funds.'
The IT major is followed by RIL (Rs 795,628.55 crore), HDFC Bank (Rs 624,362.11 crore), Hindustan Unilever (Rs 367,880.69 crore) and ITC (Rs 367,513.78 crore).
US-based chipmaker Micron Technology is expecting demand for semiconductors to rise significantly in the next few years, globally and in India, as memory consumption is going up, largely driven by the widespread adoption of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). "Memory consumption is expected to double by the end of the decade and the biggest driver in this is AI. "While it's natural to talk about compute and GPUs (graphics processing units) in the context of AI, it is not to be forgotten that the true enabler for AI is memory ... in all the AI engines that we talk about, there is a lot of need to access memory quickly," Anand Ramamoorthy, managing director, Micron Technology India, told Business Standard.
The stock of LTIMindtree finished at Rs 5,001 a piece on Monday, which means it is down about 5 per cent from its all-time high as its June quarter results for the 2023-24 financial year (Q1FY24) missed estimates. A cautious note by the management, coupled with the fact that it will miss its double digit revenue growth target for FY24 weighed on the stock price. The company delivered revenues of just over a billion dollars in the quarter with constant currency growth of 0.1 per cent.
Notwithstanding sharp volatility in March, mutual fund (MF) investors didn't fight shy of investing in riskier small-cap-oriented schemes. Inflows into small-cap funds were not just the highest in absolute terms, they were also the maximum as a proportion of assets under management (AUM) among all market capitalisation (m-cap)-oriented categories. Investors funnelled Rs 2,430 crore down small-cap funds - 1.8 per cent of their AUM of Rs 1.33 trillion.
The stock of the country's largest listed oral care company -- Colgate-Palmolive (India) Ltd is up 18 per cent over the past month. The gains were led by better than expected June quarter (Q1) performance of the 2023-24 financial year (FY24) and growth revival expectations of the oral care category. The company's volume growth is pegged at 5-8 per cent in Q1FY24. This is the second consecutive quarter of volume growth.
'The two sides agree to continue firmly supporting each other in safeguarding their respective core interests,' a joint statement issued at the end of Muizzu's talks with Chinese leaders said.
Tata Motors, the market leader in electric four-wheeler space, has sought incentives for its Tiago EV under the government's production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, group chief financial officer P B Balaji said on Tuesday. The Mumbai-headquartered firm has applied for all variants of the Tiago, which recently hit a sales milestone of 10,000 units. "The Automotive Research Association of India certification is done.
In a post on X, Modi said, "Happy to have welcomed @POTUS @JoeBiden to 7, Lok Kalyan Marg. Our meeting was very productive."
The mutual fund (MF) industry added a record Rs 10 trillion to its total assets under management (AUM) in 2023, taking the cumulative tally past the Rs 50 trillion mark for the first time, in December. This 20 per cent growth in AUM last year was fuelled by a robust rally in the equity markets and a record Rs 1.62 trillion net inflows into active equity schemes. In another first, the AUM linked to systematic investment plans, too, hit Rs 10 trillion by the end of 2023.
Drug sale volumes are almost stuck at pre-pandemic levels but price growth has improved value, data from market research agency Pharmarack AWACS showed. The Indian pharmaceutical market's (IPM) volumes in April 2023 grew by 0.21 per cent when compared to April 2019. Key therapy areas like cardiac, anti-diabetic and vitamins recorded negative volume or consumption growth, while respiratory, anti-infectives, and pain and analgesics had positive growth from April 2019 to April this year.
Commodity investments can help you diversify your portfolio in asset classes other than equity and debt, says Dwaipayan Bose.
rediffGURU Mayank Kumar offers guidance about degree courses, campus, job-linked and executive programmes and studying abroad.
Being driven to abandon Indian middle-class values, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
The sustainable impact of this process is under scrutiny, Tripathi added.
Stocks of new-age companies have seen a mixed performance thus far in calendar year 2023 (CY23). While those of One97 Communications (parent company of Paytm), PB Fintech and Zomato have surged up to 63 per cent year-to-date (YTD), FSN e-commerce, the parent company of Nykaa, however, has dropped 14 per cent YTD. By comparison, Nifty50 and Nifty 500 indices have advanced 7 per cent and 8.7 per cent, respectively, during the period, ACE Equity data show.
A few days back, Atul Ganatra, president of the Cotton Association of India, presented a grim scenario of the crop's prospects in the 2024-25 season that starts in October. Addressing the association's annual general meeting, Ganatra said the area under the crop could go down by at least 10 per cent in the coming season due to falling yields and realisation, leading to farmers losing interest. The fear of a decline in acreage comes against the backdrop of India's cotton production probably falling to its lowest in a decade, according to estimates.
The net profit of the listed Adani group companies more than doubled year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in the first half of 2023-24 (H1FY24), even as their revenue declined in this period. The nine firms posted a 107.7 per cent jump in net profit at Rs 23,929 crore in April-September compared to the year-ago period. Net sales, on the other hand, were down 14 per cent to Rs 1.49 trillion in H1FY24, data collated by Business Standard showed.
There is no near-term respite for the country's largest fast-moving consumer goods maker, Hindustan Unilever (HUL), which is facing multiple challenges on the growth front. With demand showing no signs of improvement, especially in the rural segment, the October-December quarter (Q3) of 2023-24 (FY24) is likely to be similar to the previous quarter, with volume growth in the low single digits. The stock, which is down 7 per cent over the past year compared to the 11 per cent jump for the S&P BSE Sensex, could underperform the benchmark in the near term as well.
India's top technology companies will witness a tepid revenue expansion in the third quarter (October - December) of the current financial year (Q3FY24) - along expected lines - on the back of furloughs and no blockbuster deals, even as the momentum gained from Generative AI (GenAI) is likely to take centre stage. IT services and consulting firm Accenture's first quarter numbers in FY24 showed a significant pick up in GenAI spending. It signed new bookings to the tune of $450 million in this space, a surge from the $300 million signed in the whole of FY23.
England, who are gunning for their second World Cup title, have the most valuable squad in Qatar with Jude Bellingham topping a list of over 800 players.
Equity benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty on Friday reversed their six-session losing streak and rebounded more than 1 per cent on value buying in auto, IT, financial and energy stocks. Better than expected quarterly financial results of corporates also boosted investor sentiments even as uncertainties persisted over the escalating tensions in the Middle East, according to analysts. In a largely range-bound trade, the 30-share BSE Sensex rose 634.65 points or 1.01 per cent to settle at 63,782.80 points.
For Paris-headquartered IT services major Capgemini, India has always been the backbone of its services delivery for its global clients, but the company is focused on driving more value from India as it gears up its engineering research and development (R&D) presence worldwide with its acquisition of Altran Technologies. The company, which has about 149,000 employees in India, is looking to hire 60,000 associates this year. Of them, 30,000 will be recruits from campuses and the rest lateral entrants. For Ashwin Yardi, chief executive officer India, Capgemini, the focus is to make sure that the India unit is aligned with the global plans of repositioning the company as a hub of engineering R&D, operational technology, and IT.
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