Sensex ends flat for the week

Fri, 26 Oct Closing

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Selling pressure in FMCG, pharma and banking heavyweights led the benchmark indices in Indian stock markets to feature amongst the top losers in Asia today. The Sensex ended flat week on week. Sectoral indices across the board, except auto, closed lower today. While the BSE-Sensex closed lower by around 133 points, losses on the NSE-Nifty came in at around 41 points. The BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap indices ended lower by around 1% each.

Asian indices closed a mixed bag today with Europe too trading in the negative currently. The rupee was placed at Rs 53.66 to the dollar at the time of writing.

ICICI Bank declared the results for the second quarter and first half of financial year 2012-2013 (1HFY13). The bank has reported 32% YoY growth in net interest income and 36% YoY growth in net profits for the first quarter. The bank's net interest income grows by 33% in 1HFY13 on the back of 18% YoY in advances while net interest margin (NIM) improved to 3.0% from 2.6% in 1HFY12. The cost to income ratio reduced to 41% from 45% in 1HFY12. Also the capital adequacy ratio was healthy at 18.3% at the end of September 2012. ICICI's net NPAs moved up marginally from 0.7% of advances in 1QFY13 to 0.8% in 2QFY13 (0.9% in 1HFY12). The bank's bottomline grew by 33% YoY in 1HFY13 largely due to higher interest margins and cost efficiency. This is despite increase in provisioning which enhanced coverage ratio to 79% in September 2012. Restructured assets were 1.5% of loan book in 1HFY12.

Meanwhile, power major National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) also declared the results for the second quarter and first half of financial year 2012-2013 (1HFY13). The company reported 30% YoY growth in profits for 2QFY13. For 1HFY13, NTPC group has comissioned 2,820 MW on commercial operations, which is the highest-ever by NTPC in a period of six months. Projects with capacity of 16,638 MW are under various stages of construction. NTPC's coal imports had risen 13% to 12 million tonnes in FY12. But the sharp rise in global coal prices and rupee depreciation led to escalation in costs. During the current fiscal, the company plans to import 16 million tonnes. With coal prices cooling off and rupee appreciating, the costs benefit has aided the company's profits. By 2017, NTPC plans to bring down import dependence to 13 million tonnes. It plans to raise productivity in captive mines to 37 million tonnes per annum by 2017.