Capital goods stocks scale new highs

Stocks in the engineering and infrastructure sector are back in limelight as the BSE Capital Goods index on Monday touched its lifetime peak of 9305.81.

The index's earlier all-time high was 9032.65, on May 10. The CG index moved down 36 per cent since then to close at its all-time low of 5770.98 on June 14. The index has bounced back "� traversing 61 per cent northward so far "� from its June 14 low.

The CG index joined the Sensex and two sectoral indices "� Bankex and IT index "� in breaching their previous all-time highs that they had touched on May 10. In fact, the index has outperformed the benchmark barometer in the past one week, with a gain of 4.3 per cent versus the Sensex's 2 per cent.

The Capital Goods index emerged the largest gainer on Monday, appreciating 197.85 points or 2.17 per cent to settle at 9305.81 against Friday's close at 9107.96. The Sensex, on its part, gained 55.19 points to finish at 13899.97.

Many capital goods stocks such as Larsen & Toubro, ABB, Thermax, BHEL, Bharat Electronics, Ingersoll Rand, Laksmi Machine Works, Gammon India, Alfa Laval, Siemens, BEML and Greaves Cotton gained around 5 per cent on Monday.

ABB (Rs 3,840), BHEL (Rs 2,605.85), Atlanta (Rs 990.60), Jost Engineering (Rs 460.55), Alstom Projects (Rs 484.40), AIA Engineering (Rs 1,449.90 and GMR Infrastructure (Rs 394.50) hit their all-time highs on the BSE.

Analyst attributed the robust gain in the CG index to their healthy order book positions as well as bagging new orders from both domestic and foreign companies.

Seventeen companies from the sector together received orders worth Rs 11,082 crore over the past one month, of which Rs 2,500 crore orders came in the last week to six companies.