After opening in the red, the Indian indices continued the downward trend in the last two trading hours amid out performance among mid and small cap stocks. Barring pharma, all other indices are in red. Banking and Capital goods stocks are witnessing the highest profit booking today.
The BSE-Sensex is trading down 142 points and the NSE-Nifty is trading down 38 points. The BSE Mid Cap index is trading up 0.5% and the BSE Small Cap index is trading up 0.6%. The rupee is trading at 60.30 to the US dollar.
Most telecom stocks are trading higher today. Tata Teleservices and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) are among the stocks leading the gainers. As per a leading financial daily, India's leading corporate house, the Tata group, will invest Rs 20 bn in Tata Teleservices. The company has been making losses for the last few years and has debt of about Rs 247 bn as on 31st Dec 2013. The funds wound help the company service this debt. The promoters had invested Rs 24.8 bn in January this year as the company was facing difficulties in the repayment of its debt obligations. The new funds will be infused over the next two years. The company has a market share of 7.14% and a subscriber base of 63.2 m. Tata Teleservices is trading up 1.3% today.
Most of the Mining stocks are trading mixed today. Metals and Minerals Trading Corporation of India Ltd. (MMTC), MOIL and Gujarat Mineral Development are leading the gainers. JSW Steel and SESA Sterlite are leading the losers. According to a leading business daily, the government has received 36 applications so far from various companies in response to the notice inviting applications for allocation of three coal blocks on tariff based bidding. The companies that have applied for coal blocks include Jindal Steel and Power Ltd. (JSPL) and Tata Steel. The bids are open till May 2014. The entire process of allocation will at least take four months. The auction includes two coal blocks in Jharkhand and one in West Bengal. These blocks have total reserves of 500 mn tonnes. Earlier, CAG findings had claimed that allotment of 57 mines without auction had resulted in notional loss of Rs 1,800 bn. Following this, the union cabinet in September last year had approved a new methodology for auctioning coal blocks. The methodology includes providing for upfront and production-linked payments and benchmarking of coal sale prices.
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