Category: Economy, Markets and Macro Views

In a announcement made to the BSE, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has informed that the promoters of the company have hiked their stake from 44.80% to over 49% at the end of the third quarter.

Disclosing the information, RIL stated that the promoters had purchased 12 crore shares during the period between September and December last year. As of now, the promoters hold 49.03% stake in the (more…)

Live Mint, India’s leading financial daily conducted a survey amongst Equity Analysts and found that Reliance ADAG [Anil Ambani] group Topped the List for Poor Corporate Governance, Ethics and Board Constitution. DLF and Unitech were the second most doubtful companies. Reliance Industries led by Mukesh Ambani scored far better than Anil’s companies. (more…)

JP Morgan equity research upgraded India to neutral from underweight. They were underweight on 18 January 2008 due to expensive valuations, high earnings growth expectations, rising inflation, high borrowing costs, weak currency and widening twin deficits. Many of these factors have now reversed. Monetary and fiscal policies have turned significantly pro-growth.

Over the past few months, RBI and the Government has taken measures to control the inflation [though Food Prices are still high] and ensure credit flow to the productive sectors rather than fuel a bubble in Real Estate and restructure debt where needed. (more…)

Indian Market is bracing for a poor set of results from corporate India for the quarter ended December 2008 – how bad ? Merrill bottom-up forecasts point to a slight drop in EBIDTA for the Sensex companies – we have not seen this in the past 10 years. Or there is likely a 2% increase in net profit largely due to – bond gains for banks and lower taxes, EPS would drop 1%. Nine out of the 30 Sensex companies are likely to report a decline in profits. (more…)

The monetary policy will likely lead to better near-term prospects for banks. Market consensus expectation of earnings would be propped up by potential revaluation gains and earn trading income from bonds. However, expect the headwinds for the medium-term to stay. The aggregate SCB loan growth to ease significantly from 26% in 2008E to 14% in 2009E on the back of rapid deterioration in economic activity. Slower demand for loans and lending rate cuts would likely lead to slower operating revenue growth. (more…)

It is always nice to read CRR, SLR, Repo Rate etc going down. However, the ground realities are lot different and to know what they are, we conducted a channel check and found that there has been no impact / marginal of the CRR / Repo cuts for the commercial vehicles segment. The interest rates across most financiers are in the range of 15%-18%, with large truck operators getting at the lower end of the range while (more…)