Shares of SBI fall the least amid carnage; outperforms peers

Shares of India's largest lender - State Bank of India (SBI), which opened its 15,000th branch in Tamil Nadu last week, has emerged as one of the outperformers among its large peers amid market carnage.

 

Though stocks of India's banks, both private and state-owned, have been losing steam for long. However, in past two trading sessions SBI appears has fallen the least compared with its largest peers, both in the private as well as state-owned peers.

 

At a time when counters of banks like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda (BoB) and Punjab National Bank (PNB) have witnessed an erosion of anywhere between 7% and 14%, share of SBI have performed relatively better.

 

SBI's counter on the BSE has declined less than 5% since 14th August - a day before the 750 points carnage on the Sensex. In Monday morning trade, SBI was trading at Rs 1,546.6 on the BSE at 1125 am.

 

One of the foreign brokerages firm, recently, downgraded SBI and cut its target to as low as Rs 1,200. Among the large PSU Banks, SBI is one the counters where Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) chose to cut their exposure during Q1FY14.

 

Public sector banks, which have been butchered for several weeks now and no respite seems to be seen in near future, have been joined by their private peers too over the last few weeks.