Market remains subdued, Nifty shy of 8900; Bharti Infratel up 5%

12:44 pm Reliance Jio’s grand plan: After garnering over 100 million subscribers in just six months of launch, Reliance Jio plans to overhaul the telecom industry’s revenue structure and is banking upon India’s mobile data consumption opportunity to drive up revenues in the next five years.

The company expects to corner a 50 percent revenue market share by FY21 and operating margins of over 50 percent. At an analyst meet on Thursday, the company demonstrated that there is a strong demand for data in India.

According to Jio’s estimates, about 400 million Indians can pay Rs 500 a month for data services. This would have a commensurate impact on its financials as well, as the company has invested nearly Rs 1.8 lakh crore into its ambitious telecom project.

12:25 pm Experts cheer D-Mart IPO: Market experts are already gung-ho about the Radhakishan Damani-promoted company’s IPO. Amnish Aggarwal, Senior VP-Research at Prabhudas Lilladher, likened D-Mart’s go-to-market strategy with global retailer Walmart.

Avenue Supermarts owns the D-Mart chain of around 120 retail stores, most of them in Maharashtra and Karnataka. “D-Mart has been trying to do what Walmart did in the US — enter a territory, saturate it and achieve profitability,” he told CNBC-TV18.

Overall, the dynamics on which the business model of D-Mart is built seem to be very positive and improving sales mix and financials bode well for the company, he said. Avenue Supermarts RHP (red herring prospectus) for the IPO makes a classic case of study for business schools, said market expert SP Tulsian of sptulsian.com, adding, the price band makes Avenue Supermarts IPO “very attractive”.

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Subdued trade on the market continued ahead of key event of assembly election results next week. Profit booking too dragged the indices, but the fall was limited as compared to the previous session’s correction. The Nifty was still shy of 8900.

The Sensex was down 93.18 points at 28746.61, while the Nifty was down 29.25 points at 8870.50. The market breadth indicated strain with about 1,098 shares having advanced, 1,397 shares declined. Meanwhile, 138 shares were unchanged.

Reliance and Bharti Infratel rallied on the back of positive feedback from brokerages, while Asian Paints and HDFC were the top losers.

India’s dominant services industry returned to growth in February for the first time in four months as demand slowly recovers after the government’s cash crackdown late last year, a private business survey showed on Friday. The Nikkei/IHS Markit Services Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to 50.3 in February from 48.7 in January, marginally above the 50-mark that separates growth from contraction.

Shares of Reliance Industries clocked its fresh 52-week high, driven by positive observations by analysts about the company’s prospects as well as the stock. The scrip rose over 4 percent intraday. Analysts are upbeat on the stock for a variety of reasons ranging from high-average revenue per user (ARPU) users target to cut in glitches.

A2Z Infra Engineering gained 6.7 percent intraday as it has been awarded a contract worth USD 70,66,613.41. The contract has been awarded by Grid Solar and Energy Efficiency Project, Nepal Electricity Authority for design, supply, delivery, installation, testing and commissioning of 33/11 KV substations and 33 KV lines, for the contract price aggregating to USD 7,066,613.41.