 "National Stock Exchange")
Markets opened lower on Thursday, amid weak global cues, with Tata Group shares extending losses while traders remained cautious ahead of the expiry of October derivative contracts today.
At 9:30am, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 106 points at 27,731 and the Nifty50 was down 39 points at 8,576.
Foreign institutional investors were net sellers in equities worth Rs 1,451 crore on Wednesday, as per provisional stock exchange data.
Corporate Buzz
In a five-page communication to the Tata Sons board and Tata trustees, Mistry said acquisition by Tata Steel in Europe, investments in Tata Teleservices, Tata Power’s Mundra project, and Indian Hotels’ foreign acquisition could lead to an additional Rs 1.18 lakh crore write-down by the group
Mistry said looking at the “legacy hotspots” like Indian Hotels, Tata Motors’ passenger vehicles business, Tata Teleservices and Tata Steel Europe will show that capital employed in these companies rose from Rs 1.32 lakh crore to Rs 1.96 lakh crore between 2011 and 2015 because of operational losses, interest cost and capital expenditure, Business Standard said in a report.
Global Markets
Asian markets were trading weak tracking sluggish trends in US stocks in overnight trades with shares in Hong Kong declining the most dragged by financials. The benchmark Hang Seng was down 1.2% while shares in mainland China were trading with marginal losses. The benchmark Shanghai Composite was down 0.3%. Further, Japan's Nikkei and Singapore's Straits Times eased 0.2% each.
US stocks ended flat with mixed bias on Wednesday weighed down by sluggish earnings from Apple and other major corporates while slide in oil prices also dented investor sentiment. The Dow Jones industrial average ended up 0.2% at 18,199, S&P 500 ended down 0.2% at 2,139 and Nasdaq settled 0.6% lower at 5,250.
Tata Group stocks
Tata Group shares witnessed selling pressure because of rising concerns after Cyrus Mistry highlighted that acquisitions by select companies in the group could lead to additional write-downs. Indian Hotels slumped 10%, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Steel, Tata Motors DVR were down nearly 3% each.
Index Movers
Hindustan Unilever was trading flat after volume growth, which declined one per cent for the quarter under review, its lowest in seven years. Price-led growth was three per cent. Aided by an exceptional gain of Rs 18.6 crore, net profit grew nearly 12 per cent to Rs 1095.6 crore for the quarter ended September.
Hero MotoCorp was marginally up. The two-wheeler major reported its best ever quarterly profit of Rs 1,004 crore in the July-September period, a 28 per cent jump over last year. The country’s biggest two-wheeler maker’s quarterly profit hit a four-digit mark for the first time and was higher than the estimate of Rs 931 crore arrived through a consensus of analysts tracked by Bloomberg.
ITC was up 0.5% on better-than-expected earnings. The FMCG major posted a 10.5 per cent increase in its net profit at Rs 2,500 crore for the quarter ended September 30, on the back of higher profitability from its cigarette business and a narrowed-down from the non-cigarettes fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) business.
Maruti Suzuki was trading with marginal gains ahead of its second quarter earnings later today.
Broader Markets
Jubilant FoodWorks slumped over 7% after net profit declined 1.4 per cent to Rs 21.6 crore during the September quarter against Rs 21.9 crore in the year-ago period because of higher cost of raw materials.
Noida Toll Bridge slumped 20%. The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday ruled no toll tax would be collected from those using the 9.2-km, eight-lane Delhi-Noida Direct (DND) flyway.
