Zee eyes inorganic growth

Wed, 21 Apr 01:30 pm

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After the strong momentum witnessed during the early hours today, Indian stock markets failed to hold on to the gains post noon. Unabated profit booking activity in index heavyweights led to the benchmark indices pare almost all of the opening gains during previous two hours of the trade. Currently, selling activity is being witnessed among capital goods, oil & gas, IT and metal sectors However, stocks from realty, consumer durables, auto and banking sectors are managing to find favour.

The BSE-Sensex and the NSE-Nifty are trading higher, up by around 13 points and 6 points respectively. Currently, the BSE-Midcap and BSE-Smallcap indices are trading is the green, higher by 0.4% and 1.3% respectively. The Rupee is trading at 44.43 to the Dollar.

According to a leading business daily, India's top listed television broadcaster Zee Entertainment is planning to acquire another general entertainment channel 9X which is owned by INX Media Pvt. It is believed to have secured an in-principle approval from its board to go ahead with the acquisition.

We believe that this is a prudent move for the company as given that we expect the TV broadcasting sector to continue to grow within the overall Indian media industry. The Indian media industry is set to grow at a CAGR of 12.5% per annum in the next 5 years. Zee Entertainment is believed to be able to capitalise on the same given its strong position in the sector. Zee Entertainment is trading high, up by around 3% on BSE currently.

HCL Technologies, India's fourth largest IT services exporter announced its 3QFY10 results today. It's fiscal year ends in June. The company witnessed a marginal 1% QoQ growth in the topline primarily backed by the robust performance of its Infrastructure services business offering which clocked in a growth of 11% QoQ during 3QFY10. However, the weak performance by company's BPO division which registered a fall of 13% QoQ dented its topline and bottomline. Nevertheless, HCL Tech's consolidated profits jumped by 16% QoQ, hugely bolstered by favorable forex movement.

While the company witnessed decent traction for its services in the manufacturing, media and healthcare domains in the US and Asia Pacific, continued weakness in banking and financial services and geographies like Europe remain a cause of concern. Nevertheless, we believe that company's 9MFY10 performance suggests an uptick from the lows it witnessed during the peak of global recession. The stock of HCL Technologies is up 7% on BSE today.