Sensex holds early gains, Nifty eyes 8950; ITC rebounds, Axis up

11:43 am Non-core assets sale:IDBI Bank is going to sell around Rs 5,000 crore worth of stake in its non-core investments in financial year 2018, said MD and CEO, Kishor Kharat. The bank has been working on monetising its non-core assets on an ongoing basis for the last one and a half years, says Kharat.

He did not disclose the names of the assets the bank wishes to sell stakes in. However, he expects the sale to be completed by September 2018.

IDBI Bank had on Tuesday informed the stock exchanges that it has received an in-principle nod to sell stake in some of its non-core assets.

11:30 am USFDA inspection: Dr Reddy’s Labs said it got three Form 483 observations from USFDA, for its Miryalaguda API plant in Telangana.

The company didn’t explain the nature of these observations. Miryalaguda plant was one among the three plants for which the company received US drug regulator warning letter in November 2015.

The company said it is addressing the observations raised by USFDA. Miryalaguda plant supplies active ingredients for company’s captive consumption as well as for its customers.

11:15 am Buzzing: Shares of Bharat Electronics (BEL) slipped 3.2 percent intraday ahead of dilution of stake by the government through offer for sale.

The government will sale its 5 percent stake in the aerospace and defence company via two-day offer-for-sale that will remain open till February 23, 2017.

The promoter is going to sell up to 1,11,68,139 equity shares at a floor price of Rs 1,498 per share. That will fetch the government around Rs 1,600 crore.

As on December 31, 2016, the government held 74.41 percent stake in the company.

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11:00 am Market Check

Equity benchmarks continued its uptrend from the early trade, with Reliance, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and ITC contributing to the indices’ gains. However, TCS, Infosys, HDFC and ICICI capped gains.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 137.17 points at 28898.76 while the Nifty gained 37.70 points at 8945.55.

The market breadth remained positive as about 1248 shares advanced against 1053 declining shares on the BSE.

Axis Bank and Reliance were the top gainers on the Sensex as well as the Nifty, while Infosys, NTPC and Eicher Motors were the top losers.

On sector-specific movements, aviation stocks saw gains. Jet Airways was up around 4 percent, while SpiceJet gained over 5 percent. Interglobe Aviation was up nearly 2 percent.