The stock of the state-owned oil marketing company was trading close to its all-time high price of Rs 548, touched on October 4, 2019.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said the government would wrap up the sale of Air India and BPCL by March 2020, according to a news report in The Times of India.
Analysts at JP Morgan said that BPCL remains the most likely candidate for gathering revenues from strategic sale of the government stake.
However, without Cabinet approving the stake sale process, advisors cannot be appointed. And, given the delay in appointing advisors, "we struggle to see how the March 20 deadline for completing the stake sale would be completed", the brokerage firm said in a company update.
The Disinvestment Department (DIPAM) extended the date for the appointment of various advisors for the expected BPCL stake sale to November 25. The original deadline was November 4, which was pushed out to November 11.
The brokerage firm has ‘overweight’ rating on BPCL with a target price of Rs 545 per share.
Overall, BPCL’s capex intensity should ease as large refining expansions are behind us. In our view, BPCL is well positioned to benefit even if the International Maritime Organization (IMO) upswing lasts only a few quarters, and the lower capex intensity is a positive in a range-bound refining and marketing margin environment, analysts at JP Morgan said.
In the past three months, BPCL has outperformed the market by surging 48 per cent on government strategic sale report. In comparison, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 8 per cent during the same period.
At 09:53 am, the stock was up 3 per cent at Rs 521, against 0.07 per cent rise in the benchmark index. The counter has seen huge trading volumes with a combined 5.7 million shares changed hands on the NSE and BSE so far.
To read the full story, Subscribe Now at just Rs 249 a month
Already a subscriber? Log in
Subscribe To BS Premium
₹249
Renews automatically
₹1699₹1999
Opt for auto renewal and save Rs. 300 Renews automatically
₹1999
What you get on BS Premium?
-
Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.
-
Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.
Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.
Preferential invites to Business Standard events.
Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.
Need More Information - write to us at assist@bsmail.in