Sensex down 350 pts dragged by HDFC, Kotak Bank; Nifty around 14850

IBM gets CCI nod for restructure

Competition Commission of India has granted deemed approval to IBM Corp. for an internal restructure that covers its India business, under a fast track clearance provision.

An official statement from the competition watchdog said the transaction notified by two new companies set up as part of IBM’s internal reorganisation–Kyndryl Holdings LLC and Grand Ocean Managed Infrastructure Services Private Ltd.– has been approved.

IBM’s international corporate reorganisation seeks to spin off its global managed infrastructure services (MIS) into a separate business. CCI said the target structure will be achieved by a separation of its MIS Business into the newly incorporated companies.

Gold futures fall on low demand

Gold prices fell by ₹134 in futures trade on Tuesday, as speculators reduced their positions amid low demand.

On the Multi Commodity Exchange, gold contracts for the June delivery traded lower 0.28% lower at ₹47,817 per 10 gram in a business turnover of 9,388 lots.

Punjab National Bank’s stress pile a warning ahead of its QIP

Public sector banks have always been at the wrong side of the bad loan trend over the past several years. The pandemic has meant that already weakened balance sheets are facing further pressure. Even so, shares of these lenders have outperformed the broad market in the past one month.

In March, Bank of Baroda had disclosed a rather huge pile of stressed loans when it came to the market to raise funds through qualified institutional placement of shares. A similar warning is now found in Punjab National Bank’s disclosures too. The public sector lender aims to raise funds through a QIP. As of December, the lender had 13.2% of loans with repayment overdue more than one month. (Full report)

Groww to acquire Indiabulls’ mutual funds business

Nextbillion Technology Pvt. Ltd., the parent which operates wealth management platform, Groww on Tuesday said that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd. (IBHFL) to acquire the mutual fund business of its subsidiaries Indiabulls Asset Management Company Limited (IAMCL) and Indiabulls Trustee Company Limited, trustee of IAMCL, for ₹175 crores.

The deal includes a cash equivalent of ₹100 crores, to be invested by Groww, and is subject to regulatory approvals by Sebi.

Shares decline globally

Equity markets tumbled in Asia and Europe on Tuesday following steep losses on Wall Street as investors grow increasingly worried about a surge in inflation.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 closed 3% lower. Hang Seng fell 2%. Shanghai – Composite closed 0.4% higher. London’s FTSE 100 was down 2%.

HDFC twins, Kotak Bank biggest contributor to fall on Sensex

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Indian oil refiners cut output, imports as pandemic hits demand: Report

India’s top state oil refiners are reducing processing runs and crude imports as the surging COVID-19 pandemic has cut fuel consumption, leading to higher product stockpiles at the plants, company officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

Indian Oil Corp, the country’s biggest refiner, has reduced runs to an average of between 85% and 88% of processing capacity, a company official said, adding runs could be cut further as its plants at Gujarat, Mathura and Panipat are facing problems storing bitumen and sulphur.

Granules India March quarter profit rises 38% RS 128 crore, revenue up 33%

Improved thermal generation adding to optimism on Coal India

With the rally in commodity stocks, Coal India Ltd, the country’s largest coal producer and supplier too is seeing stock prices rebound. Adding to its gains of more than 7% on Monday, the stock saw intraday gains of about 5% in morning trades on Tuesday. Strong demand and rising realizations for commodities as steel, aluminium, cement and others bode well for coal demand and realisations. The rebounding demand from the power sector is providing a silver lining. (Full report)

Nxtdigital up 13%

Hinduja Group’s Headend-in-the-Sky platform Nxtdigital and multi-system operator Siti Networks have entered into an infrastructure sharing agreement. Siti Networks (earlier Siti Cable Network) will leverage the HITS infrastructure to provide higher uptime and quality of services to its semi-urban and rural customers and NXT will earn a service fee for sharing its pan-India satellite delivery infrastructure.

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Medi Assist Healthcare files draft papers for IPO

Bengaluru-based Medi Assist Healthcare Services Ltd on Tuesday filed a draft red herring prospectus for its initial public offering with the Securities Exchange Board of India.

The IPO consists of a pure offer for sale of 2.54 million shares by Dr Vikram Jit Singh, up to 12.47 million by Medimatter Health Management, up to 6.61 million by Bessemer Health Capital LLC, up to 6.11 million by Investcorp Pvt ATE Equity Fund.

Medi Assist Healthcare Services, which manages claims related to health insurance, claims to be the largest health benefits administrator in terms of revenues and premium serviced for health insurance policies.

Godrej Agrovet’s Q4 is decent, but continuing momentum remains key

Agri-business company, Godrej Agrovet Ltd’s FY21 was a tough one. Lower demand from the hotels, restaurants and cafes segment and lower out-of-home consumption weighed on volumes in the animal feed and dairy segments.

As such, consumption of milk, chicken and egg was subdued due to lower demand in the March quarter as well. Revenues from the animal feed segment, which contributed around half of total revenues, declined by 9.3% year-on-year, primarily owing to a drop in price realisations. Note that volumes had declined by 12.6% year-on-year for FY21, but they were flat during the March quarter. Even so, the company benefited from a low base considering volumes in the March 2020 quarter had declined by 11% owing to drop in poultry feed in February-March 2020. (Full report)

Coforge up nearly 5%

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Nifty broad markets: Midcaps, smallcaps outperform

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Sensex at noon: Down 250 points at 49,250

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Near term demand and margin concerns weigh on Blue Star

Blue Star Ltd’s decent Q4 show has not been a reason to rejoice amid an uncertain near-term outlook. The lockdowns in many parts of the country during the peak summer add to concerns on the sales growth during FY22. June quarter sales remain important to drive overall growth during the financial year. Rising commodity prices, too, remain a cause for worry and can put pressure on margins. (Full report)

BSE SmallCap outshines, gains 1%

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Beyond base effect, life insurers may see a modest FY22

Investors of India’s life insurance companies will need to look beyond the optically pleasing growth metrics expected in FY22 to figure out the true performance of insurers. The first step towards this is to ignore the growth rates for the month of April.

Latest business data from the sector regulator shows that private life insurers saw their new business premium surge 90% in April while the largest Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) witnessed 74% increase. But these high percentages are solely due to a low base as the months of April and May last year saw a strict nationwide lockdown due to the pandemic. Ergo, growth metrics for the next few months may reflect a statistical low base effect. According to analysts, a better way to judge the performance of insurers is to look at a two-year compounded annual growth rate (CAGR).

Covid-19 update: India reports less than 3.5 lakh cases after weeks

As many as 3,29,942 more people tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the cumulative caseload to 2,22,96,414, said the Union health ministry on Tuesday morning.

The daily tally has only seen a slight decrease when compared to Monday.

In the last 24 hours, 3,876 people succumbed to the disease taking the cumulative death toll to 2,49,992.

InterGlobe Aviation up 1%

The board of directors of the company, which operates the country’s largest domestic airline IndiGo has approved raising upto ₹3,000 crore through a QIP process, the company said in a stock exchange notification on Monday.

Govt to conduct jobs survey online as infections rise

Rather than wait for things to normalize, the government has decided to proceed with its quarterly employment survey, moving it online in a significantly expanded version to gauge the impact of the covid pandemic on jobs.

The decision comes even as key national socio-economic surveys were suspended due to surging infections, possibly delaying a national employment policy. Four national surveys on migrants, domestic workers and jobs generated by the transport sector and professionals have been suspended. All four were to happen for the first time.

Rupee opens lower at 73.48 per dollar vs 73.35 at Monday’s close

Punjab National Bank down 3%

The state-owned bank on Monday launched a qualified institutional placement offer to raise as much as ₹1,800 crore from institutional investors. This is the second time the bank has hit the market to raise funds from institutional investors in the last six months, having raised ₹3,788 crore in December through a QIP.

Siddhartha Khemka, head – retail research, Motilal Oswal Financial on markets

“Going forward, markets are likely to remain range bound in the absence of fresh trigger. Resurgence of the second COVID wave has dented sentiments and weakened FY22E earnings visibility. Management commentaries from the on-going 4QFY21 earnings season clearly indicate that demand would moderate, especially post the second half of April. Thus earnings downgrades are increasing vis-à-vis upgrades. However, the market is looking beyond this near-term weakness and has been resilient so far. We believe, the interplay of resurgence in COVID-19 cases and the pace of vaccination would decide the trajectory of economic recovery going forward”

Nifty sectoral indices: Banks & financials slip; pharma up

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Nifty players at open: Hindalco, Tata Steel drag

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Markets open with deep cuts

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Markets in the red in pre-opening session

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Markets likely to be sluggish on weak global cues

Indian stock markets are likely to be sluggish on Tuesday while trends in SGX Nifty suggest a weak opening for domestic benchmark indices. On Monday, the BSE Sensex ended at 49,502.41, up 295.94 or 0.60% and the Nifty closed at 14,942.35, up 119.20 points or 0.80%.

Stocks to Watch: PNB, InterGlobe, SBI Card, Coforge

PNB, InterGlobe, SBI Card, Coforge and Indian Overseas Bank are some of the stocks that will be in focus on Tuesday. Companies that will declare their March quarter earnings include Aarti Industries, Alembic, BASF India, Firstsource Solutions, Granules India, Godrej Consumer Products, KEC International, and Linde India.

Oil slips

Oil prices gave up earlier gains as concerns that rising covid-19 cases in Asia will dampen demand outweighed expectations that a major US fuel pipeline could restart within the week following a cyber attack.

US crude dipped 0.63% to $64.51 a barrel. Brent crude fell to $67.83 per barrel.

Asian shares lower

Asian shares declined in early trade on Tuesday as Wall Street retreated on worries about accelerating inflation, prompting investors to cut back on their exposure to growth-focused stocks on bets of higher interest rates in the not-too-distant future. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 1.7%, with Australian stocks off 1.2% and Tokyo’s Nikkei 2.63% lower.

US markets close lower on Monday

Wall Street closed lower on Monday as inflation jitters drove investors away from market-leading growth stocks in favor of cyclicals, which stand to benefit most as the economy reopens.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 34.94 points, or 0.1%, to 34,742.82, the S&P 500 lost 44.17 points, or 1.04%, to 4,188.43 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 350.38 points, or 2.55%, to 13,401.86.