Realty & engineering stocks, major gainers

Thu, 18 Jul 01:30 pm

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Indian share markets continued to remain buoyant in the post-noon trading session. Majority of the sectoral indices are trading in the green with realty, capital goods and oil and gas stocks being the biggest gainers. However, auto, FMCG, and metal stocks are among the few stocks trading in the red.

BSE-Sensex is up 51 points and NSE-Nifty is trading 18 points up. BSE Mid Cap is trading up 0.2% and BSE Small Cap index is trading up by 0.1%. The rupee is trading at 59.7 to the US dollar.

Energy stocks are trading mixed with Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Cairn India being the biggest gainers and Indraprastha Gas and Jindal Drill being the biggest losers. As per a leading financial daily, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) has chalked out plans to invest Rs 9 bn in two capital expansion projects. The company will set up a 229 km LPG pipeline from Kochi to Coimbatore at a cost of Rs 6 bn. This is expected to reduce the road transportation of gas and connect the company's bottling plants in Pallakad and Coimbatore. In the second project, the company will invest Rs 3 bn at its Irumpanam installation unit in Kochi refinery to raise the storage capacity to 4 m tonnes. These capital expansion projects are in addition to Rs 14.2 bn expenditure plan for the Integrated Refinery Expansion Project (IREP). Under IREP, the company wants to scale up its refining capacity from 9.5 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA) to 15.5 MMTPA. Both these projects are expected to be launched along with IREP project that is scheduled to be commissioned by September 2015. BPCL stock is presently trading 0.6% up.

Indian pharma stocks are trading mixed with Wockhardt and Panacea Biotech leading among losers while, JB Chemicals and Aurobindo Pharma are among the major gainers. Lupin Pharma has announced that it has entered into strategic partnership with Merck and co (MSD) to co-market 23-valent Pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV) for the Indian markets. As per the partnership, Lupin will have a non-exclusive license to market, promote and distribute MSD's said drug. The drug is indicated for patients suffering from Pneumoccal disease. Reportedly, recent study shows that the fatality rate due to invasive pneumococcal disease in adults is 26.4% which is much higher than that in children. This calls for the need for prevention medication in order to address the disease. Pneumococcal disease is a type of infection which is caused by bacteria called 'Streptococcus pnumoniae'. This infection results into various types of pneumococcal diseases with Pneumonia being the most common. Pneumococcal disease kills more patients worldwide than any other vaccine preventable diseases. Lupin was trading up by 1.7%.