Dull Start to the Week; Software & Metal Stocks Rise

Mon, 4 Dec Closing

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Indian share markets continued to trade on a flat note in the afternoon session ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's policy meeting on Wednesday.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex closed higher by 37 points and the NSE Nifty finished higher by 6 points. The S&P BSE Mid Cap finished down by 0.1% while S&P BSE Small Cap finished down by 0.5%. Software stocks and metal stocks witnessed majority of the buying activity. Losses were largely seen in power sector, realty sector and bank sector.

Asian stock markets finished mixed as of the most recent closing prices. The Hang Seng gained 0.22%, while the Nikkei 225 & the Shanghai Composite fell 0.49% and 0.24% respectively. European markets are broadly higher today with shares in Germany leading the region. The DAX is up 1.06% while France's CAC 40 is up 0.88% and London's FTSE 100 is up 0.73%.

Rupee was trading at Rs 64.38 against the US$ in the afternoon session. Oil prices were trading at US$ 57.74 at the time of writing.

Biocon share price surged 15% in today's trade after the USFDA on Friday approved Mylan N.V. and Biocon Ltd's biosimilar for Roche's drug Herceptin, used in the treatment of breast and metastatic stomach cancer.

Wipro share price fell over 3% in morning trade before recovering to finish in green. It was reported that the company would "vigorously" contest a US$140 million lawsuit filed by National Grid US over the implementation of an enterprise resource planning project which started in 2009.

While, IT major Infosys share price surged 2.8% after Salil Parekh was announced as the new CEO and MD of Infosys with effect from 2 January 2018, for a period of five years. Interim CEO, Pravin Rao, will be re-designated as the COO of the company for the next five years.

The Indian information technology (IT) sector has been through the doldrums over the past few years. IT giants have seen flat to negligible growth in the past 3-4 years. However, going by the IT index performance in the past few months, there seems to be some fight left in the IT space.

The BSE IT index has grown by 8% since August 2017 as compared to Sensex growth of 6% in the same time period.

BSE IT Index vis-a-vis Sensex

This is in stark contrast to its performance over the past four years. The Indian IT Index has returned a meager 19% returns as compared to Sensex returns of 58% since 2013.

The sector has seen a major disruption in the business model. The shift from traditional IT services like application maintenance to analytics, cloud computing has hurt growth for almost all major IT companies.

Recent protectionist policies announced by the American government since Trump's appointment have further escalated their problems.

Automobile stocks finished the day on a negative note with Escorts Ltd share price and Ashok Leyland share price leading the losses.

As per an article in The Economic Times, India's top automakers reported double-digit sales growth in November.

The healthy November growth, though, came on a low base as sales a year earlier had taken a hit after the November 8 demonetisation announcement. Nevertheless, industry executives took the strong performance in a traditionally weak month as a positive sign.

Maruti Suzuki, India's car market leader, continued to post strong sales with volume rising 14.3% to 144,297 units in November. Sales rose 10% at nearest rival Hyundai Motor India, and 21% for home-grown utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra. Tata Motors posted a 35% expansion.

Two-wheeler makers also fared well last month. While sales, including exports, of TVS Motor went up more than 11%, those at Royal Enfield increased 22% and Bajaj Auto expanded 11%.

Moving on to news from FMCG sector. As per a leading financial daily, ITC expects its chocolate category to contribute 10% to its food division revenue in next five years.

The company had entered into chocolate category with brand Fabelle in May last year and the company is now looking at mass premium space.

ITC is focusing more on its non-tobacco businesses as it aims to be an Rs 1 trillion company in the FMCG space by 2030, with the packaged foods contributing Rs 650 billion. It also plans to enter coffee category soon.

In another development, ITC is planning to boost the capacity of its decorative paper making facility at Tribeni in West Bengal, one of its oldest paper manufacturing units, at an investment of Rs 2 billion.

The market of this paper is estimated at 50,000 tonnes in India. The best qualities are made in Europe, while other varieties come from China. This investment will allow ITC to compete with the European varieties.

ITC share price finished down by 0.1%.

In news from mining sector, Coal India's coal supply to power plants increased by 9.2% to 290.59 million tonnes (MTs) in the first eight months of the current fiscal, driven by high loading of rakes.

Coal India aid it is gearing to step up the supplies even further to pull the power stations out of the critical situation. Coal supplies to non-power sector are also gradually increasing with stabilisation of supplies to power stations.

The company as a whole loaded 191.7 rakes per day to coal- based generating units of the country during April-November 2017 compared to 179.5 rakes same period last year.

Meanwhile, the government has asked the company to focus on production enhancement, as the recent wage hike will have an estimated impact of nearly Rs 60 billion annually.

The company recently signed a wage agreement with workers' unions proposing 20% hike in salaries for a period of five year.

Coal India share price finished the day down by 2.1% on the BSE.

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