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Sensex Opens Marginally Up; Sun Pharma & Tata Steel Top Gainers
Thu, 28 Dec 09:30 am

Asian stock markets are higher today as Japanese and Hong Kong shares show gains. The Nikkei 225 is up 0.15% while the Hang Seng is up 0.66%. The Shanghai Composite is trading up by 0.52%. US stocks ended in green on Wednesday, with gains in real estate and utilities offsetting declines in energy and telecommunications stocks.

Back home, India share markets have opened the day marginally higher. The BSE Sensex is trading higher by 58 points while the NSE Nifty is trading higher by 19 points. The BSE Mid Cap index and BSE Small Cap index both opened the day up by 0.3% & 0.2% respectively.

Barring banking sector & consumer durables sector, all sectoral indices have opened the day in green with metal stocks and power stocks witnessing maximum buying interest. The rupee is trading at 64.16 to the US$.

Tata steel share price opened the day on an encouraging note on the reports that the company has appointed a domestic investment bank to manage its proposed rights issue of about US$2bn (Rs 128 bn). The stated purpose of the rights issue is to deleverage the firm.

Pharma stocks opened the day on a mixed note with Alembic Pharma and Panacea Biotech being the most active stocks in this space. As per an article in a leading financial daily, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd has received final approval from the US Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) to manufacture and market Fondaparinux Sodium injection.

The injections to be marketed will be in the strengths of 2.5 mg/0.5 mL, 5 mg/0.4 mL, 7.5 mg/0.6 mL, and 10 mg/0.8 mL single-dose prefilled syringes. It is used to prevent deep vein thrombosis (DVT).

Reportedly, the approved ANDA is a bioequivalent and therapeutically equivalent to the reference listed drug (RLD) product Arixtra Injection of Mylan Ireland. The product will be launched in January 2018.

According to IMS health sales data, the approved product has an estimated market size of US$73 million for the 12 months ended 31 October 2017.

Notably, this is the 52nd ANDA (including 2 tentative approvals) to be approved out of Unit IV formulation facility in Hyderabad, used for manufacturing general injectable and ophthalmic products.

Aurobindo now has 350 ANDA approvals (313 final approvals including 17 from Aurolife Pharma LLC and 37 tentative approvals) from USFDA.

Aurobindo pharma share price opened the day up by 1.5%.

Moving on to the news from the bank stocks. As per an article in a leading financial daily, State Bank of India is planning to raise capital worth Rs 80 billion through additional tier-I bonds (AT1 bonds) by March 2018.

Reportedly, the board of directors of the bank has given a nod to raise additional tier-I capital (AT1) of Rs 80 billion through Basel-III-compliant debt instruments.

The lender has an option to issue bonds, in domestic and international markets in rupee and US dollar including masala bonds, till 31 March 2018. The bank could also issue masala bonds to international investors for raising AT1 capital.

Masala bonds are rupee-denominated specialised debt instruments that can be floated in overseas markets only to raise capital.

One shall note that, banks in India have to comply with the global capital norms under Basel III by March 2019, three months later than the internationally-agreed time frame, by January 2019.

SBI's capital adequacy ratio (CAR) was 13.6% at the end of September 2017, with common equity tier-I at 10.2% and AT1 level of just 0.7%.

Meanwhile, Foreign debt raised by Indian companies has surged ten-fold to US$ 41 billion in 2017. This is the highest ever infusion of foreign funds in the domestic debt markets in the last 15 years. At US$ 23 billion, foreign investments in government securities and corporate paper took the cake.

This was followed by dollar denominated bonds that attracted around US$ 16 billion of foreign investments whereas funds of US$ 2 billion were mopped up by masala bonds. Masala Bonds are rupee-denominated borrowings by Indian entities in the overseas markets. All this has made the Indian bond market flush with foreign debt investments in 2017, as can be seen from the chart below:

Bond Markets on a High

Apart from the above, the recent sovereign rating upgrade by Moody's coupled with factors such as economic stability, abundant global liquidity and diversification needs of investors have stoked demand for Indian bonds in the overseas markets.

SBI share price opened up by 0.3%.

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