Street Signs

SMART EYE

Sensex at a four-month high and six straight sessions of gains at the bourses: it seems the markets are developing a thick skin. Despite inflation going up to 8.33 per cent for the week and oil prices remaining high, the bourses were a buyers' haven last week.

Heavyweights were on song, block deals were aplenty and the Indiabulls IPO was subscribed 11 times over. For a change, PC had some thing cheerful to offer.

According to him, interest rates are likely to remain stable in the medium term. But Saturday's CRR hike must have given him cause for panic.

Frangipani's interest, too, seems to have revived, with inflows from FIIs crossing Rs 300 crore for September. Desi funds also joined the celebrations, putting in Rs 230 crore for the month so far.

This comes as a contrast to their pessimism in August and July when they were net sellers to the tune of Rs 98 crore and Rs 470 crore respectively. But these are early days yet.

Show me the dividend!
Big Boy Fund (its dividend yield fund, to be precise) dumped its entire holding of nearly 3.04 lakh shares in industrial components company Alfa Laval (India) at the NSE at Rs 587.31 early last week.

Whether the fund has lost faith in the company's ability to provide decent dividends is open to debate. Anyhow, the company has been making news of late.

Alfa Laval's order-book position for this year stands at Rs 430 crore, compared to Rs 460 crore for the whole of last year. Whether this will translate to higher dividends for shareholders remains to be seen.

Monnet musings
After its shenanigans of the previous week, frangipani Jeweller Fund was back in the thick of action. It was seen buying close to 2.2 lakh shares of Monnet Ispat at the BSE at Rs 142.39. Merry Lunch Fund had earlier dumped two lakh shares of the same at Rs 142.03.

Monnet Ispat has been on the frangipani radar for some time now, with the company reporting a 250 per cent rise in net profit for Q1FY05, at Rs 17.42 crore on a turnover of Rs 99 crore. It has emerged as a significant player in the sponge iron industry with the second-largest capacity in the country.

It plans to increase coal production from its captive mine at Raigad in Chhattisgarh to 1.5 million tonnes per annum by infusing Rs 100 crore. Hats off to Peel Brokerage which had initiated coverage on the company in late 2003 with a 12-month target price of Rs 100. They do get it right sometimes.

Faith no more
The buzz is that a continental development bank based in Manila is fast losing confidence in Andhra Petrochemicals. Why else did it dump nearly 20 lakh shares of the company at BSE, ask market watchers.

The bank sold nearly 11 lakh shares at Rs 12.89, following it up by dumping another nine lakh shares at Rs 11.69 the next day. In happier times, the bank had extended the Andhra Sugar-promoted company foreign currency loans apart from participating in its equity.

Tail piece
Nosey Parker tells us that the total subscription amount received by a recently launched AMC from its IPO may not be what it seems.

The talk is that a leading corporate has taken out Rs 300 crore parked with a private mutual fund and channeled it to the new AMC's IPO account to spruce up the numbers. The understanding is that they will revert the funds back to where it came from once the IPO hype is over.