Nifty above 8950, Sensex up nearly 200 pts; Reliance zooms 10%

12:45 pm Economic Affairs Secretary on
Rs 1,000 note: The government has no plans to introduce Rs 1,000 notes and the focus is on increasing production of lower denomination currencies, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said today.

He also said complaints of cash shortages at ATMs are being addressed and requested people to desist from withdrawing more money than they need.

“No plans to introduce Rs 1000 notes. Focus is on production and supply of Rs 500 and lower denomination notes,” he tweeted.

“Complaints of cash out in ATMs being addressed. Request everyone to draw the cash they actually require. Overdrawal by some deprives others,” he said in another tweet.

12:35 pm Interview: ITD Cementation hopes to grow revenues by 8-10 percent this year with significant improvement in the bottom-line, says Chief Financial Officer, S Ramnath.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Ramnath said, currently the order book of the company is around Rs 6,600 crore excluding L1 projects. EBITDA margins are at 9.6 percent for the quarter excluding JV losses.

ITD has an annual target of Rs 6,000 crore on order inflows and expects margins and RoE to improve substantially going forward.

ITD Cementation posted a weak set of numbers for the quarter ended December 2016. It reported a weak topline and also took a hit on the profit after tax (PAT) backed by higher taxation incidence.

12:20 pm Buzzing: Share price of Ramco System added nearly 5 percent intraday as it has secured a multi-million dollar cloud deal.

“The company has secured a multi-million dollar cloud deal (about USD 2.5 million) from Allegis Group Australia Pty for Ramco ERP for Services Resource Planning (SRP), Human Capital Management (HCM) & Payroll to be implemented across 8 countries including India, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and New Zealand covering 7000+ employees & contractors,” as per company press release .

12:10 pm Axis Bank in action: Axis Bank rallied nearly 3 percent on hopes of merger with other leading bank.

Morgan Stanley feels any interest in Axis Bank will be based on its retail franchise as it is one of the few banks with a strong retail deposit franchise.

Axis has been under pressure for the last 18 months on asset quality front and investors are worried after the last two-quarter surge in bad loans.

Also read – Ambit’s Mukherjea: ‘Can’t see why you should chase this market’

12:00 pm Market Check

Reliance Industries helped equity benchmarks extending gains in noon trade. The stock rallied 10 percent, hitting nearly 8-year high after announcements of tariff plans.

Its contribution to benchmarks is nearly 100 percent and its current weightage in the Nifty is 6.01 percent, close to Infosys that has 6.02 percent weightage.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 188.01 points or 0.65 percent to 28949.60 and the 50-share NSE Nifty gained 49.25 points or 0.55 percent at 8957.10.

However, the broader markets underperformed benchmarks, trading flat on balanced market breadth.