)
Markets ended lower on Wednesdsy as investors turned cautious and resorted to profit-booking ahead of the March F&O expiry which is due tomorrow. Selling pressure in capital goods, metal, oil and power stocks weighed on the bourses.
Provisionally, the 30-share Sensex ended 118 points lower at 28,045 and the 50-share Nifty declined 25 points to close at 8,518.
____________________________(updated at 3.30PM)
Markets are trading flat with a negative bias in the late noon trades as investors turn cautious and resorted to profit-booking ahead of the March F&O expiry which is due tomorrow. selling pressure in capital goods, metal, real estate and power stocks.
At 2.40 PM, the 30-share Sensex and the 50-share Nifty are flat at 28,160 mark and 8,538 level, respectively.
Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors were net buyers in equities worth Rs 738 crore as per provisional stock exchange data.
The rupee fell by six paise at 62.32 against the dollar today at the Interbank Foreign Exchange due to appreciation of the US currency overseas.
Key Stocks
On the sectoral front, BSE Capital Gods, Metal, Oil & Gas, Power indices are trading lower up to 1.5%. However, BSE Healthcare, FMCG, Consumer Durables indices continue to trade higher up to 1%.
Mortgage lender HDFC is up 1%. The stock was quoted ex-dividend today. The board had announced an interim dividend of Rs 2 per equity share and fixed March 26, 2015 as the record date. ICICI Bank has gained over 1.5% and HDFC Bank and Axis Bank are marginally higher by 0.2%. SBI is down 0.8%.
Tata Motors has gained 1% ahead of its board meet today for the proposed rights issue to raise up to Rs 7,500 crore and buyback of secured NCDs worth Rs 1,250 crore maturing on March 31, 2016. Maruti Suzuki is up 0.4% while Hero Motocorp and Bajaj Auto have declined 0.4% and 0.6% each.
At a time when the government is trying to revive economic growth with a focus on infrastructure development, a latest report titled 'India Credit Spotlight' by Standard & Poor's (S&P) Ratings Services suggests that Indian companies in sectors like utilities & infrastructure, metals & mining, oil & gas and telecom sectors still have high debt levels.
According to the report, the debt in utilities & infrastructure sector has increased more than 2.5x and by more than 1.5x in the metals & mining sector over the past five years to fiscal 2014. That's compared with an increase of less than 1.5x by the top Indian corporates overall.
From Capital goods space, L&T (down 1.6%), BHEL (down 1.2% ). In the metal and mining pack, Hindalco (down 0.4%), tata Steel (down 0.6%) and Coal India (down 2%).
In the oil and Gas segment, ONGC, GAIL and RIL are trading lower up to 2.5%.
Pharma stocks continue to surge on a slew of positive news with mergers and acquisitions of new product patents, Dr Reddys Lab and Sun Pharma have gained 0.1% and 1% respectively. Cipla is down 0.2%. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries has completed its merger with Ranbaxy. The integration, planned by Sun Pharma over many months, will focus on supporting strong growth.
"In terms of market share, the combination of Sun Pharma and Ranbaxy creates the fifth-largest specialty generics company in the world (just behind Teva, Sandoz, Activas and Mylan), the largest pharmaceutical company in India with a market share of 9.2% with a sales of US $1.1bn, and ahead of Abbott which has a market share of 6.5% (which is huge gap in the highly fragmented Indian market. In terms of asset base, the combined entity will have operations in 65 countries, 47 manufacturing facilities across 5 continents, and a significant platform of specialty and generic products marketed globally, including more than 600 ANDAs," said Sarabjit Kour Nangra, VP Research - Pharma, Angel Broking.
"In terms of market share, the combination of Sun Pharma and Ranbaxy creates the fifth-largest specialty generics company in the world (just behind Teva, Sandoz, Activas and Mylan), the largest pharmaceutical company in India with a market share of 9.2% with a sales of US $1.1bn, and ahead of Abbott which has a market share of 6.5% (which is huge gap in the highly fragmented Indian market. In terms of asset base, the combined entity will have operations in 65 countries, 47 manufacturing facilities across 5 continents, and a significant platform of specialty and generic products marketed globally, including more than 600 ANDAs," said Sarabjit Kour Nangra, VP Research - Pharma, Angel Broking.
In the broader market, both the BSE Midcap index, down 0.1% and Smallcap index, down 0.4% have underperformed the front-liners.
Ipca Laboratories has dipped 12% to Rs 671 on the BSE on media reports that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an import alert on the company's manufacturing facilities at Pithampur and Silvassa.
PS IT Infra, Westlife Development, AIA Engineering have slumped up to 13% from Midcap space. Pipe Animation, Binny, Atlanta, Zen Technologies have plunged up to 20% from the smallcap space.
Market breadth in BSE is weak on the BSE with 1,530 declines against 900 advances.
