Markets give thumbs up to poll results

Fri, 13 May Closing

   Previous Close   

   Pre-Open   

   09:30 am   

   11:30 am   

   01:30 pm   

Buoyed by the election results in some states, the indices in the Indian stock market managed to beat most of their Asian peers in terms of gains today. The BSE-Sensex gained in the region of 195 points whereas NSE-Nifty closed higher by around 59 points (up 1%). The smaller indices also managed to sustain investor interest with the BSE Midcap and BSE Small cap indices ending higher by 0.8% and 0.3% respectively. Pharma, banking and FMCG stocks led the pack of gainers.

Major other Asian indices also closed the day on a positive note. Europe is currently trading flat to positive. The rupee was seen trading at Rs 44.82 to the dollar at the time of writing.

As per a business daily, software services major Wipro has identified some of its consumer business brands in the portfolio as non-core and is keen to sell these. Wipro derives 75% of its annual revenue from IT. The two consumer brands identified as non-core are Sunflower vanaspati and Wipro Baby Soft diapers. These are small businesses that together contribute less than 2% of the topline.

To sharpen its revenue streams, Wipro has similarly initiated a formal selloff process to find a buyer for its three-year-old water business, which they entered after acquiring water treatment firm Aquatech. The company implements water treatment projects for large industrial customers, including PepsiCo, Coca Cola and United Breweries. Also companies like KS Oils, Marico and even Jain Irrigation have in the past expressed interest in buying the two brands but not succeeded. The management of Wipro has done several organization changes to make it simpler, agile and customer centric. The benefits of these would be visible in the quarters to come. Going forward, Wipro plans to increase investments in analytics, mobility and cloud services.

Union Bank of India (UBI) declared its FY11 (financial year 2011) results. The bank has reported 24% YoY and 0.3% YoY growth in interest income and net profits respectively. The NIMs (net interest margins) moved up from 2.7% in FY10 to 3.3% in FY11 on increased lending yields and reduced fund costs. Net NPAs moved up from 0.81% in FY10 to 1.19% in FY11. The bank managed to enhance its share of low cost deposits to 32% in FY11 while growing its deposit base by 19% YoY, ahead of the sector average. It grew its advance book by 26% YoY in FY11. In order to hedge the slowdown in the growth of retail and agriculture segments, the bank tapped large corporate clients. The higher proportion of CASA (Current Account-Savings Account, low cost deposits) enabled the bank to get back to its long term average NIMs which were impacted by the bulk deposit rates in FY10. Going forward the bank estimates a 22% growth in advances and NIMs to fall marginally to around 3.2% in FY12.