Dalal Street

India’s 1QFY09 balance of payments played out, more or less, on expected lines. The current account deficit, at US$10.7bn. Notwithstanding a higher trade deficit and FII outflows, other flows continue to be strong. Beyond a robust FDI, invisibles actually surprised on the upside.

The disappointing news is that corporate external commercial borrowings slipped to a paltry US$1.6bn during 1QFY09 from US$7bn during 1QFY08. This reflected, in our view, the double whammy of tight credit conditions. Given that India lacks a local source of project finance, ECBs are critical to financing investment plans. External debt stagnated at US$221bn during the June 08 quarter.

Finally, expect the INR to regain ground in 2HFY09 with most of the adverse factors – risk aversion, oil, and USD strength – likely playing themselves out.

Orchid Research Laboratories (i.e. ORLL – the wholly-owned drug discovery subsidiary of Orchid) and Merck will work to identify and develop novel antibacterial and anti fungal compounds as clinically validated drug candidates. Orchid will undertake discovery and candidate development through Phase IIa human clinical trials. Merck will conduct late-stage clinical development and commercialization if regulatory approval is granted.

Orchid will get an undisclosed upfront sum, and is eligible to receive payments totaling more than US$100 million associated with the achievement of various research and development milestones.

The collaborative pact with Merck – a global innovator, is an landmark achievement for Orchid’s research arm as it had been undertaking efforts to secure business alliances with pharmaceutical multinational corporations. So far as ORLL is concerned, its been developing its pipeline of new chemical entities (NCEs) in the fields of oncology, inflammation, diabetes and anti-infectives.

Dish TV expects the Indian DTH market to grow five times in the next 4 years. Dish TV CEO Vinay Agarwal said,

We believe that the DTH market will grow exponentially and is estimated to touch 30 million subscribers by 2012 from 6-7 million now. We aim to add five million subscribers by March 2009.

In a separate yet related development, the contentious issue of
payment of carriage fees by broadcasters to the cable industry for carrying their channels has brought forward divisions among the various stakeholders while the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) remains undecided on the subject. Some of the new broadcasters have suggested auctioning parts of cable spectrum as a possible solution towards fixing the ground rules for carriage fees that is charged by the large cable operators from broadcasters, Multi System Operators (MSOs) have called for terming carriage fees as placement fees. The direct-to-home (DTH) firms are not keen on fixing any sort of legal norms for carriage fees.