Thursday March 29, 03:30 PM
Gains propelled... |
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By Equitymaster.com
Markets gained further ground during the final hour of trade with buying interest being witnessed amongst the index heavyweights. The advance to decline ratio ended in the favour of the former with only 16 of the Nifty stocks closing below the break-even. Buying interest was not restricted to frontline stocks as advances outnumbered declines in the ratio of 1.6:1 on the NSE. Barring select telecom, energy and auto stocks, gains were witnessed across the board.
The BSE Sensex closed at 12,980 (up 95 points) while the NSE Nifty closed at 3,798 (up 37 points). The rupee was trading at 43.76 to the dollar.
Markets managed to close into the positive during today's choppy trading session. The positive close follows the weak close that was witnessed in the last two consecutive sessions during the week. Markets opened on a firm note during the initial hour of trade, however selling amongst the participants dragged the indices below the break even for a brief period. Thereon, buying interest amongst the market participants pulled benchmark indices back into the positive. Post noon, buying in the frontline stocks propelled the gains in the benchmark indices. The Asian markets closed into the positive. The European markets have also opened on a firm note.
As per a leading business daily, ACC has outlined capital expenditure of around Rs 40 bn in the next three years to increase its annual cement production capacity to 27.5 m tonne (MT). The company also plans to augment its cement-grinding capacity at Madukkarai plant by 0.2 MTPA and at its Bargarh facility to 2.1 MTPA along with a 30 MW captive power plant, which will go onstream in 2008. The company's board has approved a capital outlay of Rs 14.9 bn to increase the clinkering capacity at the New Wadi plant with additional cement grinding facilities in Karnataka and a captive power plant of 50 MW. The cement major is also looking at hiving off ACC Nihon Castings, a wholly owned subsidiary, in order to concentrate more on its core business. The move is in line with the company's plans to retain its leadership position in the country. The stock ended marginally higher. Its peers Gujarat Ambuja (up 3%) and Madras Cement
(up 1%) also ended higher.
According to a leading business daily, Satyam Computers has signed an estimated US$ 200 m five-year contract with Applied Materials, a global leader in manufacturing microchips for providing application development, maintenance and support services. The revenue from the contract will be spread evenly and will start filtering into Satyam's topline from 1QFY08. Satyam computer has a specialised division named TIMES (Telecom, Infrastructure, Media, Entertainment and Semiconductor), which contributed to almost 20% of the company's overall revenue in the last 3 years. The stock of Satyam ended 2% higher. TCS (up 4%), Wipro (2%) were also amongst the gainers. The stock of Infosys ended flat.
After rolling back the prices earlier this month to help the government check inflation, the steel companies are gearing up to increase prices of hot rolled coils by Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 per tonne effective from 1st April 2007. The industry plans to raise the prices even though the landed import prices are higher than the domestic prices by Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,000 per tonne. The price hike will put the industry in confrontation with the government. Although there is no domestic scarcity yet, this possibility might change from 1st April 2007 with an expected US$ 30 to US$ 50 a tonne increase in the international price making exports more lucrative. The industry is expecting the prices to hit an all time high this year with major user countries like Russia turning into a net importer and with China curbing exports. Steel stocks ended firm with SAIL (up 2%) and JSW Steel (up 1%) being the key gainers. The stock of Tata Steel (TISC.BO, news) ended flat.
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