 "Markets gather pace; Sensex soars nearly 300 points")
Markets have gathered pace in the late trades on account of value buying in the beaten down bluechips at attractive valuations. Meanwhile, positive trend across the European peers and rise in the crude oil prices supported the indices.
At 14:00 pm, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 249 points at 25,351 and Nifty50 was up 58 points at 7,764.
Oil prices climbed today with Brent breaking the level of $45 a barrel as raging wildfires threatened to cut Canadian output and a decline in US crude production also boosted the commodity.
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GLOBAL MARKET
European equities are gaining across the board following a rebound in the crude oil prices. FTSE 100, CAC40 and DAX have climbed between 0.1%-0.5%. Meanwhile, Asian shares barring China’s Shanghai Composite closed lower for the seventh consecutive trading session after a mixed set of US economic data failed to enthuse the investors. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and Singapore’s Straits Times lost up to 0.5%. However, Japanese markets are shut today on account of a public holiday.
STOCKS
HDFC extended gains and remained the top Sensex gainer, up 3% after the housing finance major reported net profit of Rs 2,607 crore for the quarter ended March (Q4FY16), up 40% year-on-year (y-o-y), which was way ahead of Bloomberg consensus estimate of Rs 2,303 crore.
Tata Motors rebounded 2.6% in trades today after witnessing selling pressure yesterday as investors purchased the stock at attractive levels. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), the company's British luxury car unit, recorded decline in US sales during the month of April 2016.
Sun Pharma surged 1.7% amid reports that the pharma major is scouting for a partner to market 14 brands it acquired from Novartis in Japan. Among others, Lupin, Dr Reddys’ Lab and Cipla gained between 0.2%-1.5%.
Larsen & Toubro Infotech (L&T Infotech), IT services & solutions companies and a subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro, signed a multi-year contract with Elkjøp Nordic AS to provide end-to-end Infrastructure Management and Datacenter services. Shares of L&T rallied over 1.5%.
Hero Moto gained 0.6% ahead of Q4 numbers.
V-Guard Industries shares jumped 20% after it reported over two-fold rise in net profit for the March quarter.
On the losing side, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) slumped almost 15% in two trading session. The company reported lower than expected EBITDA margin for the quarter ended March 2016. The stock cracked 4%.
Hexaware Technologies fell 3% after the company posted marginal rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 84.2 crore in March quarter as compared to Rs 83.30 crore a year ago.
Idea Cellular slumped 5% on reports that the telecom company may spend $1.3 billion in adding data spectrum in upcoming auction around July.
