Category: Breaking Corporate India Earnings News

Market regulator Securities and Exchange Boar of India (SEBI) has delayed a nod to the MCX Stock Exchange (MCX SX) to begin trade in interest rate futures as the promoters have yet to dilute their stake in the bourse to the limit stipulated by the market watchdog.

MCX, one of the chief promoters of the equity exchange, is optimistic of meeting the divestment deadline by September 15, 2009. Financial Technologies (India) is the other co-promoter of the bourse.

Currently, MCX SX is providing a platform for currency futures and in less than a year of the launch of the segment, it has managed to acquire nearly 50% market share.

Under SEBI guidelines, a specified set of domestic investors – including depositories, stock exchanges, banks and financial institutions – can hold up to 15% stake in a stock exchange.

While MCX is in talks with several players – domestic as well as international – to sell stake in MCX SX, valuation is seen as a hindrance in the stake sale.

We strongly Recommend that the Government should stop Private Exchanges and should only permit Professional Exchanges like the NSE with 100% Government control. MCX-SX is one of the main reasons for the Food Inflation which is rampant in country.

Tata Steel posted consolidated revenue of Rs232.9bn and EBITDA of -Rs299mn compared to MS estimates of Rs260bn and Rs521mn, respectively, and F4Q09 numbers of Rs264bn and Rs328mn, respectively. We note that reported Teeside EBIT loss of Rs2.44bn was higher than our expectation of Rs1bn. Adjusted for the loss, results were ahead of expectation.

Ex-India business losses at the net level were down sequentially from Rs54bn to Rs30bn this quarter. At the EBITDA level as well the loss slipped just 8% QoQ to -Rs17.1bn. We find this a credible performance due to adverse steel price trends that Corus faced in the quarter, just a 57% capacity utilization in Europe and high raw materials costs due to the impact of old inventories.

This should be driven by full reflection of improving steel prices, higher capacity utilization, and full impact of lower raw material costs.

In a significant move in the history of Indian consumer finance, CIBIL, India’s first Credit Reporting Agency has started accepting requests from consumers for Credit Information report.

Until now, Consumers had the right to see their credit report through the bank which made credit inquiry. Henceforth, Customers can directly request such reports by paying a small fees of Rs 142. Looks like CIBIL has some kind of pilot project understanding with CardBhai through which the forms to request Credit Information report are made available.

This is really cool as transparncy will come to both the sides.

According to latest data released by Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC), India’s engineering exports has slipped nearly 21% to touch $3.33 billion in June 2009, as compared to $4.21 billion in the corresponding month last year owing to a slack demand from major global markets like the US and the EU.

EEPC says that engineering exporters are not hopeful of a near time recovery in demand in the international market as the trend is looking bleak. The order book is quite weak as very few exporters are getting orders from the US.

Exporters see silver lining in the large stimulus packages announced by the governments in the major markets expecting a revival in demand. In sync with the international trade situation, India’s overall exports have been on a slippage for the last ten months.

Fortis Healthcare has said that the issue committee of the directors of the company has fixed 2:5 ratio for its rights issue i.e. 2 new shares for every 5 shares held.

Apart from this, the subscribers to the rights issue will also be entitled to 2 detachable warrants (one each of Series A and Series B) for every 2 rights shares allotted.

These detachable warrants can be called upon by the company, at its option, within the given time frame, in future.

The company has fixed the price for its rights issue at Rs 110 per share, consisting Rs 10 as the face value and Rs 100 towards the premium. The size of the rights issue will be Rs 997 crore.

The proceeds of its rights issue would be used for funding greenfield projects, including green field project in Gurgaon, redemption of preference shares, repayment of short term debt, upgradation of its existing facilities and tapping future investment opportunities for growth, as mentioned in its filing with the BSE.

The issue is scheduled to open in the first fortnight of September 2009.

As the global economic slowdown has ripped countries indiscriminately, India’s revenue growth from outsourcing is slowing significantly after years of bagging double-digit growth. Companies have slashed their IT budgets and consumers will need a lot more persuasion before they can feel confident enough to loosen purse strings, according to a forecast by Gartner Consultancy. The report has also added that the full impact of the global recession on the IT services and telecommunications sectors is still emerging.

National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) has projected the sector’s export revenues will rise by just 4-7% this year to at most $50 billion. The Indian IT space is sailing through tougher times for the flagship outsourcing industry, whose skilled and low-cost workforce have put the country on the global map.

The growth rate at 4-7% for the fiscal is much lower than the 16% logged in the last financial year to March and the 30% rise the industry clocked annually for most of the decade.

The global economic downturn has made companies reluctant to authorise new spending for maintaining their growth.