Market Live: Nifty opens above 9,800, Sensex moderately higher; Biocon zooms 8%
10:00 am Buzzing: Shares of Biocon gained over 8.5 percent intraday as investors turned bullish ahead of the regulator meeting to discuss its breast cancer drug filing.
The US drug regulator’s Advisory Committee (Adcom) will be meeting on July 13 to disucss trastuzumab filing done by Mylan, Biocon’s partner. Trastuzumab is used to treat metastatic (spread) breast cancer. It is effective against tumors that overexpress the HER2/neu protein, according to chemocare.com.
According to Sharekhan, investors could monitor the outcome of this meet closely and if the product is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, it will be the first Herceptin biosimilar in the US market.
Further, it highlighted that Roche’s Herceptin brand generated global sales of USD 6.7 billion in last calendar year and is slated to lose US patent exclusivity in 2019.
9:50 am USFDA action: Vista Pharmaceuticals shares were locked at 5 percent lower circuit at Rs 32.75 after the US health regulator issued warning letter to company’s Telangana unit.
At 09:48 hours IST, there were pending sell orders of 88,188 shares, with no buyers available on the BSE.
The US Food and Drug Administration has issued two observations for Telangana unit that inspected between September 19 and September 23, 2016, according to CNBC-TV18 reports.
The USFDA said there have been significant violations of current good manufacturing practice regulations for finished drugs.
Vista has been failed to clean, maintain equipment & utensils at appropriate intervals, and also failed to establish procedures to assure drug strength, identity & quality.
9:40 am Earnings Estimates: Saion Mukherjee of Nomura said the Q1FY18 earnings season is likely to be challenging.
For the ex-banks and oil and gas universe, he forecasts a revenue growth of 3.1 percent (YoY).
This is the weakest YoY revenue growth recorded in the past 3 years and the disruptions due to the implementation of GST, rupee appreciation, rising overheads and the impact of higher commodity prices are the factors that are hurting earnings growth in the quarter, he said.
Mukherjee expects a revival in Q2FY18, but the results season is unlikely to drive any earnings upgrade, according to him.
9:20 am Rupee: The Indian rupee opened higher by 8 paise at 64.51 per dollar versus previous close 64.59.
Pramit Brahmbhatt of Veracity said, “The rupee has seen resistance at 64.50/dollar. The trading range for the spot USD-INR pair is seen between 64.50-64.75 for the day.”
The dollar fell to a more than one-week low against a basket of major currencies after US President Donald Trump’s eldest son released an email chain citing Russian support for his father before last year’s US election.
Also read – Buy, Sell, Hold: 2 stocks and 1 sector are on the radar of analysts today
9:15 am Market Check: Equity benchmarks opened moderately higher on Wednesday, with the Nifty climbing above 9,800 level despite weak Asian cues, backed by Reliance Industries, healthcare and auto stocks.
The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 62.75 points at 31,809.84 and the 50-share NSE Nifty gained 25.45 points at 9,811.50.
IndusInd Bank, ACC, Ambuja Cements, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and IOC were early gainers.
The broader markets also participated in uptrend on positive breadth. About 761 shares advanced against 244 declining shares on the BSE. Nifty Midcap 100 gained 0.5 percent.
Biocon surged 8 percent while Tilaknagar Industries, Globus Spirits, United Breweries and United Spirits rose 1-10 percent.
HUDCO, CDSL, AU Small Finance and PNC Infratech continued to rally, up 2-6 percent whereas CCL Products and Vista Pharma were down 4-6 percent.
Asian equities were mostly lower as markets stateside digested the release of a series of emails from the son of President Donald Trump.
