Ajit Mishra, vice president, research, Religare Broking, answers your stockmarket queries.
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.
UBS AG's head of operations (India), Manisha Girotra has resigned from the bank to pursue her own business venture. The lender has named Aashish Kamat as the new head of its India business.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for the telecom major, informed Justice Manmohan that the company in its response to the high court's August 22 notice has said it is not acceding to jurisdiction of the Indian courts in the matter.
Eight telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, the biggest three in the country, bid a combined Rs 61,162 crore (Rs 611.62 billion) in the spectrum auction held earlier this month.
The overall wireless subscriber base increased to 114 crore at the end of June
All Sensex components ended in green, with Bajaj Finserv, HCL Tech, Bharti Airtel, IndusInd Bank, L&T, TCS, ONGC and ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance and SBI gaining up to 6.64 per cent.
The issue was whether India could tax capital gains arising from sale of shares of overseas companies merely because such companies had downstream subsidiaries in India.
Telecom major Bharti Airtel led the growth in segment with net addition of 1.31 million subscribers.
Engage, don't entice, advises advertising guru Sandeep Goyal.
Apex telecom industry body COAI has asserted that spectrum pricing should be kept conducive to market conditions as 5G entails upfront capital investments with monetisation spread over a long-haul, and pricing radiowaves high will only push the players up against the wall. The stage is set for Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to come out with its recommendations on 5G spectrum pricing and other modalities for upcoming auctions, and the announcement from the sector watchdog is expected anytime now. Norms will also be worked out for new frequencies such as 526-698 MHz and millimetre band, that is 24.25 - 28.5 GHz, in addition to bands such as 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 2500 MHz, 3300-3670 MHz.
By becoming associate sponsor, STAR Plus brand will get assured mileage on broadcaster SET Max.
While in all, 15 entities owe the government Rs 1.47 lakh crore -- Rs 92,642 crore in unpaid licence fee and another Rs 55,054 crore in outstanding spectrum usage charges, it is not immediately clear just how much of that has been sought by the government by midnight.
The profit boost for studios will in large part be driven by the rush for local-language content from platforms like Netflix Inc
Big brands are keen to tie up with IPL for advertising purposes.
Reliance Industries Ltd is expected to invest Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion), of the total Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) announced, in its telecom arm Reliance Jio Infocomm over the next two years, credit rating firm Moody's said on Monday. The investment in the telecom business is a credit negative for RIL because RJio will not generate any EBITDA (an indicator of cash flows) for at least next 12 months, it said. Moody's added however that RJio will be a formidable competitor in the sector making it a credit negative for top telecom operators already in the field. "Based on RIL's March 2014 annual report, we estimate that it has already invested about Rs 400 billion (Rs 40,000 crore) in Reliance Jio, and we expect RIL to invest the next Rs 300 billion in Reliance Jio over the next two years," Moody's Investors Service said in a statement. RIL recently announced that it will launch commercial 4G telecom service of RJio in 2015 entailing investment of Rs 70,000 crore. RIL has said that RJio will initially cover about 5,000 towns and cities accounting for over 90 per cent of urban India, as well as over 215,000 villages in India and the target is to expand this to over 600,000 villages. Moody's said RJio will be a "formidable competitor in India's telecom sector" as it will enter the business with financial muscle. RJio's entry into highly competitive telecom sector is also credit negative for incumbent mobile operators and market leaders Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India because "it will undoubtedly result in intensified competition that will lead to declines in average revenue per user and margins". But, it also said that strong spectrum holding of incumbents; existing large subscriber-bases and well- established brand equity; offering 2G and 3G services (apart from 4G services being launched) as well as marketing and distribution architecture mitigate much of the near-term competitive threat from Reliance Jio for them. "Furthermore, given issues of language and literacy, large parts of rural India remain a substantially voice-based market where near-term demand for 4G services may be muted," Moody's said.
When on October 24, the Supreme Court, on a petition moved by the government, ordered payment of past dues according to its new definition of AGR, the country's second-biggest carrier Vodafone-Idea Ltd warned of shut down if no relief is given. The total dues for the industry ran into a whopping Rs 1.47 lakh crore. For an industry that has come from 7-8 operators to just three private players and state-owned fourth operator, the warning by Vodafone-Idea sounded like a death knell.
The European Union has said the recent big ticket merger and acquisitions between Indian and European companies including Tata-Corus and Vodafone-Hutch would pave the way for greater economic integration
BSE Midcap and BSE Smallcap outperformed the frontline indices to gain 0.2% and 0.3%
Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Jio Infocomm and five other telecom firms will battle it out at the spectrum auction tomorrow, from which the government expects to garner at least Rs 11,300 crore (Rs 113 billion).
This is the biggest equity-raising exercise by an Indian corporate within a financial year. The fundraising - led by Citibank, Goldman, Kotak and Axis Capital as bankers - will see participation by foreign and domestic institutional investors.
Vodafone Idea, the promoter of Aditya Bira Idea Payments Bank, said in a notification to the exchanges late on Friday that the board of the bank approved winding up the business, subject to approval from the Reserve Bank of India.
Telcos propose licence regime for apps like WhatsApp, Skype.
Have committed themselves to investing Rs 1,85,000 crore since last year.
Top companies have grabbed a bigger pie of their sectors in the pandemic period, leading to a further rise in market concentration in many industries as measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). The HHI score, which indicates competitive intensity in an industry (or a lack of it), reached a new high in FY21 as bigger firms raised their revenue market shares either organically or through mergers and acquisitions. A higher HHI score indicates a rise in market concentration in favour of a few firms while a lower score means that the industry's revenue is more evenly divided among many companies
Disgraced former Australia captain Steve Smith has tied up with the local arm of Britain's Vodafone Group in an advertising campaign that leverages the nation's ball-tampering shame for marketing purposes.
Bharata Natyam legends Shanta and V P Dhananjayan discover they are a national sentation after their Vodafone ads.
Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin is expected to visit India next month to reconstitute the board of Hutch Essar, which would be renamed as Vodafone Essar.
Pranab refuses to give any guarantee of rollback after UK counterpart warns of adverse impact on investments.
The final Test in Brisbane will start on January 15. The series is locked 1-1 after the third Test ended in a draw.
Total wireless subscribers increased from 1.1 billion, in January to 1.2 billion in February, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.72 per cent.
Telecom industry body COAI has approached the information technology ministry for removal of fake and misleading messages from social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter linking spread of COVID-19 to 5G technology. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), whose members include Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, said the claims linking 5G with coronavirus are baseless as 5G networks have not yet been installed in the country and even 5G trials are yet to be started by the telecom operators. In a letter dated May 15 to MeitY additional secretary Rajendra Kumar, COAI director general S P Kochhar said: "To safeguard the national interest, we request your good office to kindly instruct all the social media platforms such as Facebook, Watsapp, Twitter, etc, to remove all such posts and misleading campaigns from their platforms on an urgent basis." People have been sharing audio and video messages on social media platforms in which 5G towers are being blamed for rise in casualties across the country even though none of the companies have installed 5G technology anywhere in India.
The retrospective tax controversy was highlighted by Vodafone, but Cairn Plc's continuing problems point to the impact this law has had on FDI in India's oil and gas sector.
Against the backdrop of the controversy over Vodafone tax issue, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday sent out clear signals to foreign investors saying there will be 'no arbitrariness' in tax matters.
The rights issue price has been set at Rs 1,257 a share, a discount of nearly 14 per cent to the last closing price of Rs 1,459. The company had set May 14 as the record date for the rights issue, which meant shareholders as on that day would be eligible to apply. Shareholders will be able to apply for one share for every 15 shares held.
The government has suffered a loss of Rs 12,488.93 crore (Rs 124.88 billion) due to under-invoicing of gross revenue by six telecom companies including Reliance Communications, Vodafone and Bharti Airtel, the CAG said in a damning report on Friday.
'How can you explain the necessity of selling an institution that has been delivering regular returns to the government, that has never asked for any capital from the government, that has invested Rs 38 lakh crores in the Indian economy and that owns 4 per cent of the market capitalisation in India?'
The company, which had made voluntary disclosures about the bribery incident to the US authorities, also said with this resolution, there was no pending investigations against Cognizant.
Telecommunication companies buying airwaves in an Indian auction next month will pay 5 per cent of their revenue as an annual fee.
Every service provider, say analysts, now needs to make a much larger investment, and therefore needs a much larger share of the market to be profitable.