India : Sensex, Nifty open flat; BHEL up, Bank of Baroda falls 5% on Q1
The market has opened flat with the Nifty still below 8600. The 50-share is down 4.30 points at 8571 while the Sensex is up 2.04 points at 27776.92.
BHEL, Axis Bank, Coal India, NTPC and ICICI Bank are top gainers while GAIL, Wipro, Sun Pharma, HDFC and TCS are losers. Bank of Baroda is down 5 percent after it posted disappointing Q1 results.
The Indian rupee opened lower by 9 paise at 66.81 per dollar versus 66.72 Wednesday.
The Department of Telecom has ‘suspended’ spectrum sharing, trading and liberalisation activities till the provisional results of the upcoming spectrum auction are declared.”The Spectrum Trading Guidelines… would remain suspended during the time of conduct of auction i.e. from the date of issue of NIA for auction of spectrum to the date of publishing of provisional result of the auction,” the amended spectrum sharing and trading guidelines said today.
Similarly, the DoT has suspended spectrum sharing and liberalisation activity as well. The move may impact merger of Reliance Communications with Sistema Shyam Teleservices as well as RCom and Aircel to some extent.
According to the sources, this move by the government is to ensure that upcoming spectrum auction, in which airwaves worth Rs 5.63 lakh crore is being put for sale, attracts good interest from bidders.
Bank of Baroda’s first quarter profit fell 59.7 percent to Rs 423.6 crore compared with Rs 1,052.15 crore in year-ago period, dented by higher provisions. Slow net interest income and tax expenses (against tax credit YoY) also impacted profitability but it was supported by higher other income and operating profit.
Net interest income declined 2.6 percent to Rs 3,371 crore from Rs 3,459.6 crore on yearly basis.
Asset quality weakened further in June quarter as gross non-performing assets (NPA) as a percentage of gross advances increased 116 basis points sequentially to 11.15 percent and net NPA rose 67 basis points to 5.73 percent.
Tirthankar Patnaik of Mizuho Bank said, “We expect some of the recent weakness on the dollar against global currencies and sustained capital inflows to continue supporting the rupee in the near term, which should range between 66.25-66.75/dollar.”
The US dollar fell broadly as US treasury yields fell and investors waited on a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen later this month.
