Closing Bell, Monday, July 22, 2024: Indian stock markets traded in a narrow range on Monday as investors chose to be fence-sitters ahead of the presentation of the Union Budget 2024 (FY25). The BSE Sensex ended at 80,502, down 102 points or 0.13 per cent, while the Nifty50 closed at 24,509, down 22 points or 0.09 per cent.
In the broader markets, the BSE MidCap, and SmallCap indices snapped their two-day losing run to settle 1.3 per cent and 0.85 per cent higher, respectively.
Sectorally, the Nifty Auto, and Pharma indices ended over 1 per cent higher each. On the downside, the Nifty Media, and IT indices slipped up to 0.7 per cent.
Buzzing stocks
Wipro: Shares of Wipro closed 9 per cent lower on the BSE on Monday. This came after the information technology firm posted sluggish growth in the first quarter of financial year 2024-25 (Q1FY25). According to analysts, Wipro failed to show positive signs of a recovery with miss on revenue growth, muted growth guidance for 2QFY25 and decline in large deal TCV despite bagging a mega deal.
Reliance Industries: Shares of Reliance Industries (RIL) dipped around 3.5 per cent on the BSE on Monday after the company reported a 5.5 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) decline in consolidated profit to Rs 15,138 crore for the April-June period of 2024-25 (Q1FY25). This, the company said, was a result of weakness in its oil-to-chemicals (O2C) division and higher depreciation costs, offsetting gains in the consumer (retail and telecom) and oil & gas upstream businesses.