The brokerage earnings estimate for the January-March 2024 quarter (Q4FY24) for Nifty 50 companies hints at a slowdown in corporate profit growth while revenue increase is likely to be in low single digits as in the previous two quarters. According to various brokerage estimates, the companies' combined net profits are expected to grow 3.1 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in Q4FY24, the slowest in the last five quarters. For comparison, the index companies' combined net profits were up 8.2 per cent Y-o-Y in Q3FY24 and 3.4 per cent Y-o-Y in Q4FY23.
The domestic technology industry's revenue is projected to grow 3.8 per cent to $254 billion this fiscal, industry body Nasscom said on Friday and highlighted creation of 60,000 more jobs during this period. The industry had clocked a revenue of $244.6 billion in the same period last year, according to Nasscom's annual strategic review report. Excluding hardware, the revenue is expected to touch $199 billion, a growth of 3.3 per cent over FY23, as per the report.
Passenger vehicle retail sales rose to a record high in January driven by robust demand for sports utility vehicles, dealers' body FADA said on Tuesday. Passenger vehicle (PV) sales rose to 3,93,250 units last month, registering a jump of 13 per cent from 3,47,086 units sold in January 2023. "SUV demand along with the introduction of new models, greater availability, effective marketing, consumer schemes and the auspicious wedding season underpinned this strong performance," Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) president Manish Raj Singhania said in a statement.
Driven by robust demand, automobile retail sales in India rose to a record high this festive season with all segments, barring tractors, reporting year-on-year growth, dealers' body FADA said on Tuesday. Overall automobile sales rose 19 per cent to 37,93,584 units in the 42-day festive period this year as compared with 31,95,213 units last year. During the period, which starts from the first day of Navratri and ends 15 days after Dhanteras, passenger vehicle retail sales rose to 5,47,246 units, up 10 per cent from 4,96,047 units in the same period last year.
'Corporations that were recruiting 15 or 20 [students] have reduced the number to two or three.'
From the Sensex basket, Tech Mahindra, Tata Steel, JSW Steel, HCL Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services, Larsen & Toubro and Kotak Mahindra Bank were the biggest laggards. Mahindra & Mahindra, Power Grid, Bajaj Finance, IndusInd Bank and Maruti were the major gainers.
India's GDP for the January-March quarter, grew by 9.3 per cent, beating market expectations, compared to 8.6 per cent in the year-ago period, mainly on the back of a healthy 5.5 per cent growth in the agriculture sector.
Housing sales are estimated to rise 93 per cent year-on-year during April-June across seven major cities, but may fall 58 per cent compared to the previous quarter due to the adverse impact of the second wave of COVID-19, according to property consultant Anarock. Sales are likely to be around 24,570 units across seven major cities -- Delhi-NCR, Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, Anarock said. Sales of residential properties stood at 12,740 units in April-June 2020 and 58,290 units in March quarter 2021.
Among the 30 Sensex companies, Larsen & Toubro, Power Grid, NTPC, State Bank of India, Reliance Industries and HDFC Bank were the biggest laggards. Sun Pharma and Nestle were the only gainers.
Government-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has seen substantial gains from its investments in Adani group shares, which have experienced a significant recovery over the past year. The value of LIC's stake in Adani group companies surged by 51.6 per cent, or Rs 22,591 crore, reaching Rs 66,388 crore as of Friday's close. This compares to Rs 43,797 crore on May 31 last year, according to stock exchange data.
His family thanked the Tyagi Community for its support during their ordeal.
The total allocation to the defence sector is 12.9 per cent of the total budget of the government of India for the financial year 2024-25.
Aided by robust demand, automobile retail sales in India rose by 11 per cent last year as compared to 2022, dealers' body FADA said on Monday. The overall domestic automobile retail sales stood at 2,38,67,990 units in the 2023 calendar year as compared to 2,14,92,324 units in 2022. Passenger vehicle sales stood at 38,60,268 units last year, up 11 per cent from 34,89,953 units in 2022.
VFS Global expects visa applications from India to surpass pre-pandemic levels in 2024 with the easing of appointment availability. Vishal Jairath, head-South Asia, VFS Global, said during a media interaction that based on indications from the client governments in terms of appointment availability and the resources deployed by them, visa applications would surpass the pre-Covid levels by a healthy margin. "We have geared up. We have looked at our infrastructure and increased capacity in many locations," he added.
Among the Sensex firms, Wipro jumped over 6 per cent after the IT company's December quarter earnings beat estimates. The other prominent gainers were HCL Technologies, HDFC Bank, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries.
Amid slowdown blues, the government has unveiled a raft of measures over the past few months aimed at improving liquidity in the system, moderating interest rates as well as credit growth apart from addressing stress in the NBFC sector.
In the wake of the Supreme Court order on razing of the illegal twin towers of Supertech, NOIDA CEO Ritu Maheshwari on Monday said the demolition process will begin on site within two weeks. She said NOIDA (also called the Noida Authority) has already convened a meeting on Wednesday at 12 noon in compliance with the apex court directives. The SC on Monday directed it to commence "within two weeks" the demolition of the realty major's twin 40-storey towers of its Emerald Court project in Sector 93A of the city.
India's exports declined by 2.83 per cent to $33.90 billion in November this year compared to $34.89 billion a year ago, government data released on Friday showed. Imports also declined to $54.48 billion in the month under consideration, as against $56.95 billion recorded in November 2022.
While student housing, retirement homes, and co-living spaces are going to be new realty growth drivers, Parekh also said foreign investors have also been investing in a big way in good commercial projects, while warehousing is another segment where they are showing keen interest.
The combined market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies hit an all-time high of Rs 343.48 lakh crore on Monday, amid a rally in equities after the BJP registered victory in assembly polls in three Hindi heartland states. Following the sharp uptick in the market, investors became richer by over Rs 5.81 lakh crore on Monday. The 30-share BSE Sensex jumped 1,383.93 points, or 2.05 per cent, to close at a lifetime high of 68,865.12.
The Nifty gained 62 points to close at 3,178.
The life insurance industry reported a 25.28 per cent decline in new business premium income in November 2023 to Rs 26,494.83 crore from Rs 34,588.8 crore recorded a year ago. The fall in group premium and change in taxation norms for policies with a higher ticket size dragged the premiums of the state-run Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and private insurers, respectively. According to the data released by the Life Insurance Council, the premium of private insurers slipped 9.33 per cent Y-o-Y to Rs 10,360.29 crore from Rs 11,426.73 crore as a result of a change in product mix due to the measures taken to counter the impact of tax imposed on the premiums of Rs 5 lakh.
Consumer goods firms and auto companies are witnessing an upturn in rural demand, which had been lagging for most of FY24. Expectations of a bumper rabi crop harvest have helped turn the tide. The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) Monetary Policy Committee kept the repo rate unchanged last week, noting that as rural demand catches up, consumption is expected to support economic growth in 2024-25.
The avoidable stresses and strains in ties helped in one way. It showed for the entire region how a matured India handled diplomatic relations, especially with a smaller and suspicious neighbour, with practised dignity and patience, unruffled by provocations in word, deed and action, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Continuing the upswing on the strength of the good showing by manufacturing sector, the economy grew by 9.3 per cent during the April-June quarter of the current financial year.
Among the Sensex firms, Bajaj Finance jumped the most by 4.64 per cent. Bajaj Finserv, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Asian Paints, UltraTech Cement, ICICI Bank, NTPC, JSW Steel and Tata Steel were among the major gainers. Infosys, Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, IndusInd Bank and HCL Technologies were the major laggards.
Profits of India's top listed companies have been growing at a faster pace than those of their American peers, but when it comes to revenue growth, the order has reversed recently. The combined net profit of the S&P 500 companies was up 14.1 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) during the trailing 12 months (TTM) ended December 2023, as against 17.4 per cent profit growth logged by the BSE 500 companies in the same period. This is the second consecutive year of faster profit growth for the BSE 500 companies.
The parliamentary election result was also to prove that the Maldivians want "autonomy in choosing their future, without foreign coercion," President Muizzu said, without naming any country, according to the Sun.mv news portal.
The country's exports edged up 1 per cent to $38.45 billion in December 2023 while the trade deficit narrowed to a three-month low of $19.8 billion, official data released on Monday showed. Imports declined by 4.85 per cent to $58.25 billion in December last year due to a dip in crude oil shipments. The previous low in trade deficit - the difference between imports and exports - was recorded in September at $19.37 billion.
Among Sensex shares, Bajaj Finserve, ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel, Bajaj Finance, Sun Pharma, Maruti Suzuki, ITC, and Nestle were the lead gainers. On the other hand, L&T Wipro, IndusInd Bank and TCS and Tata Motors were the lead losers.
'It is advisable to stay away from the markets for now and buy only on a dip.'
Among the Sensex firms, Wipro, HCL Technologies, NTPC, Reliance Industries, Infosys, IndusInd Bank, Tech Mahindra and Tata Consultancy Services were the major laggards. IT stocks fell on profit-taking after rallying sharply in the past two sessions. Tata Steel, Titan, Maruti, Larsen & Toubro, ITC and JSW Steel were among the gainers.
India's industrial production growth rose to a 14-month high of 10.3 per cent in August, mainly due to good show by the manufacturing, mining and power sectors, according to the official data released on Thursday. The factory output growth measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had contracted by 0.7 per cent in August 2022. The previous high was recorded at 12.6 per cent growth in June 2022.
According to an Andhra government statement, Naidu 'reposed confidence' in the PM's leadership.
Employment in India saw a V-shaped recovery after being adversely impacted between April and June 2020 during the Covid lockdown and during April-June 2021, when the second wave struck, said Krishnamurthy V Subramanian, former chief economic advisor, in a paper released on Friday. Subramanian is now serving as executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). From the official survey data of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the paper titled 'Employment in India: Data Sources, Facts, and Trends' showed that both worker-population ratio (WPR) and labour force participation rate (LFPR) were higher, while the unemployment rate was lower during October-December 2022 when compared to the corresponding quarter in 2019.
Mutual funds are loading up on information technology (IT) stocks on improved valuations and low downside risk after a double-digit correction in top companies like Infosys and Wipro. IT stocks were MFs' top sectoral buys in April when they invested a net of Rs 2,100 crore. In the first four months of 2023, the net investments in IT amounted to Rs 9,500 crore, shows an analysis by ICICI Securities.
India's exports declined by 6.86 per cent to $34.48 billion in August this year as against $37.02 billion in the same month last year, government data showed on Friday. Imports too declined by 5.23 per cent to $58.64 billion as against $61.88 billion recorded in August 2022.
Modi's inability to make peace with a renewed Opposition will only embolden his coalition partners and it is just a matter of time before they begin asking probing questions besides politely disagreeing with his tactics, predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Fresh formal job creation cooled for the second consecutive month to decline to a six-month low in September, signalling a downturn in the labour markets this financial year. The number of new monthly subscribers under the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) declined by 6.45 per cent to 891,583 in September from 953,092 in August, shows the latest payroll data released by the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). Besides, the net payroll additions -- calculated by taking into account the number of new subscribers, the number of exits, and the return of old subscribers -- increased by 14.9 per cent to 1.72 million in September from 1.49 million in August.
With the real estate sector witnessing robust demand, realtors are doling out freebies and offering a slew of attractive schemes to lure potential customers this festival season. "Developers are providing Amazon vouchers that go up to Rs 1 lakh, iPads, and flexible payment plans that propel customer excitement," said Angad Bedi, managing director at real estate company BCD Group. Bedi said customers have a mindset to go for a change during the festival season, and developers see it as an opportunity to combine it with long-term and practical offers that drive buyers to close in on a deal during this period.
