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Sensex Ends 598 Points Lower, Nifty Settles Below 15,100-Mark; HDFC and JSW Steel Top Losers
Thu, 4 Mar Closing

Indian share markets witnessed huge selling during closing hours today and ended their day deep in the red.

Benchmark indices broke their three-day winning streak today on the back of selling seen in the metal stocks.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood lower by 598 points (down 1.2%). Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty ended down by 164 points (down 1.1%).

UltraTech Cement was among the top gainers today.

JSW Steel and HDFC, on the other hand, were among the top losers today.

SGX Nifty was trading at 15,103, down by 191 points, at the time of writing.

The BSE Mid cap index and the BSE Small cap index ended up by 0.5% and 0.8%, respectively.

On the sectoral front, metal stocks, banking stocks and finance stocks were among the hardest hit.

Shares of UltraTech Cement and Dilip Buildcon hit their respective 52-week highs today.

US stock futures are trading lower today indicating a weak opening for Wall Street indices with the Dow Futures trading down by 87 points (down 0.3%).

Gold prices for the latest contract on MCX are trading down by 0.3% at Rs 44,835 per 10 grams.

The rupee is trading at 72.85 against the US$.

Speaking of the rupee, Brijesh Bhatia, Research Analyst at Equitymaster, discusses why he thinks there is a possibility of the rupee falling to Rs 80 against the dollar in 2021, in his latest video for Fast Profits Daily.

Tune in to the video below to find out more:

In latest developments from the IPO space...

Hyderabad-based MTAR Technologies which opened its Rs 5.96-billion initial public offering (IPO) for subscription yesterday was subscribed 8.6 times today.

The offer received bids for 6.2 crore equity shares against the IPO size of 72.60 lakh equity shares. The IPO size has been reduced to 72.60 lakh shares from over 1.03 crore shares after the closing of the anchor book through which the company raised Rs 1.7 billion.

The portion reserved for retail investors has been subscribed 14 times and that of non-institutional investors 6.2 times, while the qualified institutional buyers have put in 77% bids against their reserved portion.

The IPO comprises a fresh issue of 2.15 million shares and an offer-for-sale (OFS) of 822.4 million shares and will close on March 5.

MTAR is a leading maker of nuclear, defence and aerospace equipment, fabrication facilities and fuel cells. The company recently sold 185.1 million shares at Rs 540 apiece in a pre-IPO placement to schemes of SBI Mutual Fund and Axis Mutual Fund.

The price band has been fixed at Rs 574-575 apiece for the IPO.

According to the company's prospectus, proceeds from the fresh issue will be used for repayment or pre-payment of its borrowings and funding working capital requirements.

In other news, Delhi based online travel agency Easy Trip Planners plan to raise Rs 5.1 billion through an initial public offering (IPO). The issue opens for subscription on March 8, 2021, and closes on March 10, 2021.

The company aims to raise R 5.1 billion through its public issue which is a complete OFS. Promoters Nishant Pittie and Rikant Pittie, holding 49.8% and 49.7% respectively in the company, will sell up to Rs 2.5 billion worth of shares each.

The company and selling shareholders in consultation with merchant bankers will decide the price band and the minimum bid today (March 3, 2021) and the anchor book will open on Friday (March 5, 2021).

EaseMyTrip.com is operated by Easy Trip Planners Private Limited.

For the calendar year 2021, Easy Trip will be the tenth issue, after Indian Railway Finance Corporation, Indigo Paints, Home First Finance Company, Stove Kraft, Brookfield India REIT, Nureca, RailTel Corporation of India, Heranba Industries and MTAR Technologies.

The company has been consistently profitable since incorporation, and according to the CRISIL report, it was the only profitable online travel agency among the key online travel agencies in India during FY18-FY20, in terms of net profit margin.

Its market share in the total Indian online travel agency industry in terms of gross booking revenues and gross booking revenues for the airline ticketing segment was approximately 4.6%, and 5.5%-6.5%, respectively, in FY20.

How the above IPOs sail through remains to be seen. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more updates from this space.

Moving on to stock specific news...

Vivimed Labs was among the top buzzing stocks today.

Vivimed Labs share price witnessed buying interest today after the company announced that its FDF manufacturing facility near Hyderabad was approved by the Ukraine Ministry of Health.

Vivimed Labs announced that its FDF manufacturing facility located in Jeedimetla, near Hyderabad inspected in August 2017 by the Ukraine Ministry of Health, has been approved and accredited with GMP Certification effective September 2017 and same has been renewed up to 4 February 2022.

The GMP approval extension also includes 5 new product registrations.

Ukraine is a member Country of PICS, whose members include many European Countries.

Ramesh Krishnamurthy, CEO of Vivimed Labs said 'successful renewal of PICS GMP Certification enables Vivimed to scale up its branded product distribution in CIS Countries. Export thrust is key contributor to the growth strategy of Vivimed.'

Vivimed Labs is a pharmaceutical and chemical products company. The company's segments include specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

In news from the auto sector...

Tata Motors share price was also in focus today as the company announced the launch of the new XTA variant of Tata Tiago with automatic manual transmission (AMT), at a starting price of Rs 5.99 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

With this, the company is strengthening its automatic line-up with 4 AMT options. Customers now have an array of options to choose from within the Tiago range.

Since its launch in 2016, Tiago has been one of the most successful products of Tata Motors.

Tata Motors share price is also in focus as it was reported that the company is all set to challenge Tesla before the latter begins manufacturing in India.

The company's Jaguar Land Rover India on Wednesday said it has set up charging infrastructure across 22 retail outlets in the country as it prepares to launch its all-electric SUV, Jaguar I-PACE, later this month.

Tata Motors has said its British luxury unit Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) aims to be net zero on carbon emissions by 2039 as carmakers across the world race to roll out clean-energy vehicles.

The Tata Motors-owned group's strategy comes as car groups worldwide accelerate moves towards fleets powered by electric and other green technologies.

Speaking of electric vehicles, note that the power ministry has approved setting up 2,636 electric vehicle charging stations across 62 cities in 24 states.


Here's what Co-Head of Research at Equitymaster, Tanushree Banerjee wrote about electric vehicles in one of her editions of Profit Hunter:

  • 106 public and private entities have approached the government for permissions to set up about 7,000 EV charging stations.

    This clearly shows the vehicle manufacturers have enough incentive to capture this latent demand.

    The tax benefit in terms of a lower GST rate (at 5%) is a further shot in the arm of the EV industry.

As per Tanushree, electric vehicles are very much on their way to invading Indian roads. The threat of disruption in this era is something you cannot ignore.

Tanushree believes one of the companies manufacturing lithium ion batteries for powering electric cars will be a key catalyst for the Rebirth of India.

To know what's moving the Indian stock markets today, check out the most recent share market updates here.

For information on how to pick stocks that have the potential to deliver big returns, download our special report now!

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