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Indian Indices End on a Flat Note; Realty Stocks Witness Buying
Thu, 14 Mar Closing

Indian share markets traded range-bound throughout the day and ended their session on a flat note. Sectoral indices ended on a mixed note with stocks in the healthcare sector, realty sector and metal sector witnessing buying interest while IT stocks and automobile stocks witnessed selling pressure.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 3 points and the NSE Nifty closed up by 2 points. The BSE Mid Cap index ended the day down by 0.3% and the BSE Small Cap index ended up by 0.1%.

Asian stock markets finished on a mixed note. As of the most recent closing prices, the Hang Seng was up by 0.2% and the Shanghai Composite was down by 1.2%. The Nikkei 225 was down 0.1%.

The rupee is trading at 69.55 against the US$.

Blue Star share price was in focus today after it was reported that the company has launched 75 new air conditioner models to celebrate its 75th Anniversary.

The range includes inverter ACs with 30% extra cooling and significant power savings.

HCL Technologies share price was also in focus today after the company announced the acquisition of Strong-Bridge Envision (SBE), a digital transformation consulting firm with offices in Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, and New York City.

With the above acquisition, SBE will become part of HCL's global Digital and Analytics business.

Strong-Bridge Envision is a digital consulting firm specializing in customer experience strategy, business transformation, and change management. Serving Fortune 1000 clients since its founding, Strong-Bridge Consulting merged with Envision in 2017 to extend its consultancy and digital transformation capabilities and further establish its footprint across North America, transforming itself into a market leading digital transformation consultancy.

As per the company, the above collaboration will bring SBE's customer experience legacy and 200 experienced SBE employees from across various industries and top-tier consulting firms to the HCL family.

In the news from mutual funds space, as per a leading financial daily, the Essel Group has put its mutual fund business on the block in order to monetize the company's non-media business.

As per the news, Srei Mutual Fund Asset Management, Avendus Capital and Lodha Ventures Holdings are currently in the race to acquire Essel Mutual Fund, which has Assets Under Management (AUM) worth about Rs 14.2 billion. The deal is estimated to be valued at around Rs 1 billion.

The decision to sell the stake comes as the Essel Group is figuring ways to repay its debt.

At the group level, Essel has total debt of Rs 171.7 billion and out of this, Rs 114.6 billion is the infra-related debt. This infra-related debt covers three major verticals which are power transmission, solar and roads (toll and annuity).

As per the news, promoters of Essel Group are already in talks with multiple companies, including Sony Pictures and Comcast, to sell up to 50% of their holding in Zee Entertainment Enterprises. The Subhash Chandra-promoted group has also started working on a plan to monetise its non-media businesses in order to pare debt.

Apart from repaying its infrastructure-related debt, the company is also planning to use the funds raised through asset monetisation to reduce the pledged portion of the promoter shares in Zee Entertainment Enterprises.

Note that promoters had pledged their 59% stake in Zee Entertainment to raise money that served as equity funding for the group's infrastructure related businesses.

How this all pans out remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we will keep you updated on all the developments from this space.

Also, speaking of mutual funds, it is worth noting that inflows into equity mutual funds stand at 25-month low.

Inflows into Equity Mutual Funds at 25-Month Low

Here's what Ankit Shah wrote about this in a recent edition of The 5 Minute WrapUp...

  • You can see the net monthly inflows rising through 2016 and surging to unprecedented highs in 2017. But the inflows slowed in 2018. After October 2018, the inflows into equity mutual funds have been dropping every consecutive month. In fact, in February 2019, the net inflows into equities, including those linked to savings scheme funds, declined to Rs 5,122 crore. That's a 17% drop from January 2019, and a steep 69% plunge from a year ago.

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