Persistent buying buoys indices

Mon, 10 May Closing

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   Pre-Open   

   09:30 am   

   11:30 am   

   01:30 pm   

After opening in the green, markets made steady inroads into the positive territory in the ensuing hours led by sustained buying activity across index heavyweights. This ensured that the indices closed well above the dotted line in the final trading hour. While the BSE Sensex closed higher by around 580 points (up 3%), the NSE Nifty gained around 176 points (up 4%). Midcap and small cap stocks also did well to notch gains of 2% and 3% respectively. Gains were largely seen in metals and banking stocks.

As regards global markets, Asian indices closed firm today while the European indices have also opened in the green. The rupee was trading at Rs 44.87 to the dollar at the time of writing.

Pharma major Cipla announced its FY10 results late Friday. The company clocked a subdued 7% YoY topline growth during FY10. The domestic business did reasonably well to grow by 10%. However, exports performance was muted with sales growing by a mere 6% YoY. While exports formulations grew by 7% YoY, exports API growth was flat. Operating margins expanded by 4.5% to 24.2% largely due to a fall in raw material costs and other expenditure (as percentage of sales). The bottomline grew by 39% YoY due to a strong show at the operating level, lower interest costs and extraordinary income received during the year. Cipla had signed an agreement with Piramal Healthcare for the sale of intellectual property rights in India related to the brand ‘i-pill’ for a consideration of Rs 950 m. Thus, even after excluding this extraordinary income, Cipla’s bottomline growth was still strong at 27% YoY during the year. The stock, however, closed lower by 6% today.

Most auto stocks closed firm today with the key gainers being Tata Motors, M&M and TVS Motor. As per a leading business daily, the total domestic vehicle market grew by 25.2% in April as the automobile industry continued to benefit from the overall economic growth witnessed by the country. According to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), domestic car sales witnessed a growth of 39.5% YoY during April. What has fuelled the overall growth in the auto industry has been the increasing thrust on infrastructure, availability of finance and improvement in customer sentiments. However, the likelihood of sustaining such a robust growth in the coming year looks challenging. Plus Indian automakers will have to deal with the problem of rising input costs.

As reported in a leading business daily, top policymakers do not expect the Greek debt crisis to impact India much other than that there could be hiccups in the near term due to likely capital outflows. The major concern for India continues to be inflation and this has been spreading to the non-food items too. Part of the reason for the rise in inflation has been the influx of money from foreign investors especially in equities. Indeed, as far as the Greek sovereign crisis is concerned, any near term selloff by foreign investors should be looked upon as an opportunity by long term investors in India to buy good quality stocks at attractive prices.