EV Sales Speed Up in February, the Latest on LIC IPO, and Buzzing Stocks Today

Mon, 14 Mar Pre-Open

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Indian share markets ended on a positive note on Friday.

Benchmark indices bucked the weak Asian trend and ended marginally higher as the Assembly elections' euphoria extended into a second day.

However, developments around the Ukrainian war, commodity prices, and the US inflation data kept the markets volatile through the day.

At the closing bell on Friday, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 86 points (up 0.2%).

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty closed higher by 36 points (up 0.2%).

Cipla and Sun Pharma were among the top gainers.

Nestle India and Maruti Suzuki, on the other hand, were among the top losers.

The BSE Mid Cap index and the BSE Small Cap index ended up by 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively.

Sectoral indices ended on a positive note with stocks in the healthcare sector, oil & gas sector and consumer durables sector witnessing most of the buying interest.

Auto stocks, on the other hand, witnessed selling pressure.

Shares of Cipla and Balrampur Chini hit their respective 52-week highs.

Gold prices for the latest contract on MCX were trading down by 0.3% at Rs 53,056 per 10 grams at the time of closing stock market hours on Friday.

Speaking of stock markets, India's #1 trader Vijay Bhambwani explains why he is very bullish on silver, in his latest video for Fast Profits Daily.

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Top Stocks in Focus Today

Among the buzzing stocks today will be TCS.

The ongoing share buyback by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has seen record participation from investors surpassing the previous record made in 2020.

The company's buyback has seen participation from 2,23,875 investors as on 11 March 2022, which is only the third day of the buyback window. Previously, the highest participation in a buyback by the information technology major was of 1,95,470 investors in 2020.

The buyback window will close on 23 March 2022. TCS has offered to buy back up to 40 million shares of the company at a floor price of Rs 4,500 per share.

The participation has likely been led by retail investors and mutual funds. So far, retail investors have tendered 8.5 million shares out of the 15.2 million shares offered to the company by investors at the end of the third day of the buyback window, according to the data on BSE and NSE.

Mutual funds were a distant second as they tendered around 5.1 million shares of the IT giant in the three days so far.

Over 1.5 million individual investors hold around 3.6% stake in the IT services company, while 40 mutual funds own nearly 3.3% stake, as per the company's latest shareholding data.

Interestingly, participation from foreign institutional investors (FIIs) has been subdued as they have tendered merely 1.2 million shares of the company so far. The low participation from foreign investors so far, stands in contrast to the selling in IT stocks from the cohort in the secondary market in the past few months.

Electric Vehicle Stocks will also be in focus today.

Sales in the electric car segment in India picked up in February after a blip in January, with Tata Motors leading the charge.

Several automakers are now offering affordable electric cars to boost the electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem in the country. The total registrations of EVs in the first two months of 2022 surpassed the 1 lakh mark.

Tata continues to dominate the electric cars segment with a whopping 96% share of the market. Its two leading electric car models Tata Nexon EV and Tata Tigor EV sold about 2,264 units in February and posted a massive rise of 421% compared to cars sold last year in the corresponding month.

The second name on the list is MG Motor ZS EV, which has sold 38 units. However, its YoY sales dropped by more than two-thirds to 127 units, while sales of 59 units were reported in January 2021. The MoM decline is reported to be more than one-third.

In case of Mahindra & Mahindra, a key player in the Indian EV market, posted sales growth of 20% over the corresponding month of last year.

While in the electric two-wheeler space, Hero Electric clinched the top position in February sales. It sold 7,357 units, up from 2,194 units the previous year. The 7,764 units sold in January 2022 was a touch lower on a month-over-month basis.

Similarly, another top player in the electric two-wheeler market, Bajaj Auto, has reported Chetak sales of 1,314 units, up from 111 units YoY. Their MoM growth from 611 units is significant.

EVs are attracting more consumers day by day. Policies encouraging the deployment of electric vehicles have become prominent in recent years.

Government to File Final Papers for LIC IPO with the Regulator Soon

The government is planning to soon file the final papers for LIC IPO with market regulator, which will provide details about the price band, discount for policyholders and retail buyers, and the actual number of shares to be put on the block.

The government is presently in the wait-and-watch mode because of the market volatility induced by the Russia-Ukraine war and will decide on the timing of the initial public offering (IPO) of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC).

'We have got the approval of the DRHP and the next step would be to file the RHP, which will give details of the price band and the actual number of shares. We are watching the situation, and soon we will take a call on the timing of the share sale,' an official told PTI.

LIC had, on 13 February 2022, filed the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for LIC IPO. Earlier this week, the market regulator gave approval to the draft papers, paving the way for the share sale.

The government was expecting to garner over Rs 600 bn by selling about 316 m or 5% shares in the life insurance firm to meet the curtailed disinvestment target of Rs 780 bn in the current fiscal.

In case the initial share sale does not happen by March, the government will miss its revised disinvestment target for the current fiscal by a wide margin.

In a separate filing, LIC said its December quarter profit stood at Rs 2.3 bn compared to Rs 9 m in the same quarter last year.

ICICI Bank to Acquire 5% Stake in NARCL

ICICI Bank today announced that the private lender has signed an agreement on 10 March 2022 for investment in National Asset Reconstruction Company (NARCL). NARCL is an asset reconstruction company, which was incorporated on 7 July 2021.

The bank will acquire up to 5% equity holding in NARCL with total cash consideration of up to Rs 1.4 bn in tranches.

Equity investment would be in tranches with first tranche of equity investment of Rs 704.5 m expected to be completed by 31 March 2022, ICICI Bank announced in an exchange filing today.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in her Budget 2021 speech announced the creation of NARCL or bad bank to resolve large cases of stress.

NARCL has been set up by banks to aggregate and consolidate stressed assets for their subsequent resolution. Public sector banks (PSBs) will maintain about 51% ownership in NARCL.

A bad bank is a corporate entity that alienates illiquid and risky assets held by banks and financial institutions or a group of banks.

It is created to help banks clean their balance sheets by transferring their bad loans so that the banks can focus on their core business of taking deposits and lending money.

In January this year, India's proposed bad bank received all regulatory approvals, and lenders plan to transfer at least Rs 500 bn of toxic assets to it by 31 March 2022, State Bank of India (SBI) chairman Dinesh Khara had said.

How this pans out remains to be seen. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more updates from this space.

To know what's moving the Indian stock markets today, check out the most recent share market updates here.

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