Stock Market Highlights: Sensex ends 400 points lower, Nifty holds 15,200; IT, financials drag

Thank you readers! Here are the key highlights from today's session

- Market Fails To Hold Recovery, Closes With Minor Cuts

- Nifty & Sensex Slip 0.7-0.8%; Nifty Bank Falls 0.5%

- Midcap Index Ends With A Minor Gain; Mkt Breadth Favours Declines

- Nifty Slips 105 Points To 15,209 & Sensex 400 Points To 51,704

- Nifty Bank Falls 187 Points To 36,911 While Midcap Index Rises 72 Pts To 23,388

- PSU Banks Amongst Top Gainers On Privatisation Reports

- Bank Of India, Bank Of Maha, Central Bank Close At Upper Circuit

- SBI Amongst Top Nifty Gainers On The Buzz Of An Upgrade

- HDFC Twins, Kotak Bank & Infosys Drag While RIL, SBI & Hero Support Nifty

- Happiest Minds Rises 20% After Nomura Initiates Coverage With A Buy Rating

- ITI, Dixon Tech Gain On Cabinet’s Approval For Telecom Equipment PLI

- Page Ind Falls More Than 3% After CEO’s Resignation

Closing Bell: Sensex ends 400 points lower, Nifty below 15,200; IT, financials drag

The Indian indices ended over half a percent lower on Wednesday mainly dragged by the financial and IT stocks. Meanwhile losses in FMCG and pharma sectors also weighted on the sentiment. However, Nifty PSU Bank rallied during the day, up nearly 6 percent on privatisation buzz. The Sensex ended 400 points lower at 51,703 while the Nifty fell 104 points to settle at 15,209. Nifty Pharma lost the most, down 1.7 percent. The Nifty Bank IT and Nifty Fin Services indiced lost over a percent each while Nifty Bank and Nifty Fin Servcies fell around 0.5 percent each. On the Nifty50 index, Hero Moto, BPCL, SBI, Adani Ports and Powergrid were teh top gainers while Nestle, Asian Paints, Maruti, Bajaj Finserv and HDFC Bank led the losses.

Market Watch: Prakash Diwan Market Expert

“If you see Adani Ports in perspective of freight corridor coming in and the kind of basket of ports presence that the company has created for itself I think it brings in a huge level of potential efficiencies that will come in. One could probably into this at lower levels and probably wait for at least for next two years for it to kind of start giving out that kind of returns you would expect on 18-20 percent CAGR basis.”

Happiest Minds Tech

“The way it has moved up 35-40 percent in just about a weeks’ time does make you worry that there will always be a time when you can buy these and there is still a lot of floating stock that is available post the IPO that won’t have changed hands. So at higher levels you will probably see some dispersion and that is when you would get in closer to Rs 420-410 and then kind of look at it from a longer term perspective.”

Expect earnings momentum to continue; positive on capital goods and PSUs: Roha Asset Managers

Dhiraj Sachdev, Managing Partner & CIO of Roha Asset Managers on Wednesday said that Q3 earnings witnessed a sharp rebound and demand recovery. He said that it was has been one of the best earnings seasons and expects the earnings momentum to continue as the economy revives. “The corporate result season for December quarter concluded and we were compiling the data. It shows that there is significant improvement and upgrades that is happening across the sector. As the economy has happened and the number of COVID cases have contained, Q3 results witnessed a sharp rebound and demand recovery along with cost savings. So, it has been one of the best earnings season and fairly broad-based. So we expect the earnings momentum to sustain despite partly being pent up given that there will be a further revival in the economy,” he said in an interview with CNBC-TV18. More here

Explained: Rising US yields and its impact on equities

S P Apparels share price jumps 20% on new order

S P Apparels share price jumped 20 percent intraday on February 17 after the company bagged a new order worth Rs 25 crore. The company’s order book now stands at Rs 240 crore as of today. The share touched its 52-week high Rs 231 and 52-week low Rs 57.95 on 14 January, 2020 and 26 May, 2020, respectively.

Have reduce rating on IndusInd Bank, says HDFC Securities' Krishnan ASV

HDFC Securities has a ‘reduce’ rating on IndusInd Bank, said Krishnan ASV, Lead Analyst for BFSI at the domestic brokerage on Wednesday.Explaining the rationale for the rating, Krishnan said, “We have a reduce rating. The colour of the book doesn’t change significantly. I believe the RoE normalisation will take a bit longer. That is the reason why we have a reduce rating there. This was in the works, there has been a little bit of extension given to the promoters, so for the last week or so, this has been doing the rounds that the money has to come in this week. I think this is a fairly priced stock.”

Steel Strips: Promoter releases pledge on 2 lakh shares (1.28% equity) on February 16

RailTel Corporation IPO subscribed 4.2 times, HNIs portion fully booked on second day

The public offer of RailTel Corporation of India, which has been profitable since FY07 and consistently paying dividends since FY08, has continued to see good subscription for the second day of bidding on February 17. It is subscribed 4.24 times so far with strong support from retail investors whose reserved portion has seen a 8 times subscription. The Rs 819-crore IPO has received bids for 25.95 crore equity shares against offer size of over 6.11 crore shares, the subscription data available on the exchanges showed. The portion set aside for non-institution investors was subscribed 1.32 times and that of employees 1.1 times, while the qualified institutional buyers put in 1 percent bids against their reserved portion.

Financials & IT stocks lead the fall for Nifty

Expect margin recovery in the near term: KEC International

KEC International has won orders worth over Rs 1,600 crore. Vimal Kejriwal, MD & CEO, KEC International speaking to CNBC-TV18 said, “Roughly Rs 1,200 crore are from Power Grid and another Rs 100 crore from another transmission clients and then we have Rs 250 crore odd from a water pipeline and the rest are from smart city and cables.” On margins, Kejriwal said, “Margin profile is lower because these were quoted sometime back when the metal prices were slightly low. So right now the margins are low, but we do expect that the margins should go back to normal 8-9 percent but as of today the margins are lower in some of the orders, but other are okay.” More here

CRISIL study on NPAs: NBFC stressed assets may hit Rs 1.5-1.8 lakh crore by FY21

Stressed assets of non-banking financial services companies (NBFCs) are expected to reach Rs 1.5-1.8 lakh crore, or 6.0-7.5 percent of the asset under management (AUM) by the end of the financial year 2021, according to credit rating agency Crisil. However, the one-time Covid-19 restructuring window and MSME restructuring scheme will limit the reported gross non-performing assets (GNPA) of the NBFC, Crisil said. It noted that unlike previous crises, current challenges on account of COVID-19 impacted almost all NBFC asset segments. Most impacted segment as per CRISIL to see deterioration in asset quality in the NBFC sector is real estate finance followed by unsecured loans i.e. personal loans and consumer loans. More here

Morgan Stanley upgrades India's growth estimates for FY22 & FY23

Morgan Stanley has raised the gross domestic product (GDP) growth estimates by 200 bps for FY22 and by 50 bps for FY23. Therefore, the current projection stands at 6.7 percent versus 6.2 percent earlier. The report says that the brokerage expects growth recovery to be faster than previously anticipated for India and the country is on the cusp of a virtuous growth cycle. Watch accompanying video of CNBC-TV18’s Ekta Batra for more details

Base case for US 10-year yield is below 1%: HSBC

The Budget, the Parliament and the Reserve Bank's latest policies have put a lot of problems and uncertainties before India's financial markets, more so, its bond and forex market. Hitendra Dave, Head of Global Banking & Markets at HSBC India, talks about the US yields and factors impacting them.  In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Dave said, "The US being the mother market for all fixed income markets or actually all markets global, if their yields go up then all bond markets globally tend to have the same direction." More here