Market movers: What is clipping wings of airline stocks?

NEW DELHI: Even though traders on Dalal Street seem to be unaffected by the sharp rise in Covid-19 infections in the country, there is one sector that is seeing real impact - Airlines.

The sector is feeling the double impact of declining traffic and rising fuel costs. On Tuesday, air traffic dwindled to 2,85,965, a first after 59 consecutive days of domestic passenger numbers exceeding 300,000.

Moreover, oil companies also raised the price of air turbine fuel (ATF) that is also likely to hit the balance sheet of airline companies, eating into profit margins.

Thus, Interglobe Aviation that runs IndiGo dropped 3.13 per cent to Rs 1,977.75 on Wednesday. Its smaller peer SpiceJet fell 1.78 per cent to Rs 66.15 on NSE.

HFCL’s AI flight
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one name that everyone wants to be associated with and telecom equipment manufacturer and technology provider HFCL is the latest one to join the bandwagon. For this it has partnered with Aprecomm, an AI-powered Wi-Fi analytics technology provider.

The company now plans to integrate these analytics capabilities for a wider range of its products and solutions. HFCL's entire 10 product portfolio will have integrated Al-powered network analytics, enhancing the experience for network service providers as well as the end users, the company said.

Following the announcement, HFCL surged 8 per cent.

VIX fires up again
Even as benchmark indices have rallied for four consecutive sessions, investors are becoming more worried now given the worsening pandemic. The direct impact of the worry can be seen in the India VIX index.

India VIX, barometer of future volatility, surged nearly 7 per cent to 17.22 level.

The week has been marked with heavy buying in banks and financials but other sectors have seen both buying and profit booking, which has kept overall gains for them in check.