Indian markets zoom ahead

Thu, 24 May 01:30 pm

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After languishing above the dotted line, the Indian equity markets picked momentum in the last two trading hours. All the sectoral indices, barring pharma are trading positive with oil and gas and banking stocks clocking the biggest gains.

The Sensex today is trading up 198 points and NSE-Nifty is trading up 60 points. Both BSE Mid cap index and BSE Small cap index are trading up 0.5% and 0.6%, respectively. The rupee is trading at 56.1 to the US dollar.

Majority of the energy stocks are trading positive with Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Petronet LNG being the biggest gainers and Chennai Petroleum and Cairn India being the biggest losers. As per a leading financial daily, Reliance Industries (RIL) and its partners British Petroleum (BP) and Canada-based Niko Resources have relinquished rights to the D4 oil and gas block. The D4 block lies north of the D6 block in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin. While RIL is the operator of the block with the largest stake of 55%, BP and Niko hold shares of 35% and 10%, respectively. Niko feels that the oil and gas potential at D4 block is much lower than their estimates and the commercial viability still remains unattractive. This development re-iterates the falling potential of RIL's production and exploration blocks. The company sold off 30% stake in 21 oil & gas blocks to BP last year. Further, RIL has revised down the proven gas reserves of its gas blocks by 7% to 3.7 trillion cubic feet due to low pressure and uneconomic volumes. The stock is up 1.1%.

Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) announced its results for the quarter and year ended March 2012 yesterday. During the quarter, the company's revenues grew by about 8% YoY. Operating profits increased by a fast pace of 21% YoY as the company was able to contain costs and improve margins to 25.6% as against 22.8% during 4QFY11. BHEL's profits increased at a similar pace of 21% YoY as lower interests costs balanced out the rise in depreciation charges. A lower tax outgo also helped the company prop up its profits during the quarter.

As for the full year FY12, the company revenues and profits increased by 14% YoY and 17% YoY. Similar to the performance during the quarter, the company was able to clock marginally higher operating margins. A higher other income also boosted earnings for the company during the year. The order book at the end of the quarter stood at Rs 1.35 tn which is nearly 2.8 times its full year FY12 revenues.