Sensex ends in red, Nifty at new closing high; HDFC up 2%

03:30 pm Market closing

The market ended flat after a volatile session ahead of F&O expiry. The Nifty ended at record closing high up 3.80 points or at 8914.30. The Sensex snapped 8-day gains, down 11.86 points at 29559.18.

03:00 pm Rights issue

State Bank of India (SBI) will raise Rs 15,000 crore through a public offer including rights issue to fund business and meet global capital adequacy norms.

"The committee of the Directors for capital raising has decided to seek government or RBI approval for raising capital up to Rs 15,000 crore by way public issue...," SBI said in a statement.

The bank requires adequate capital to match the anticipated growth in asset and comply with stipulated level of capital adequacy, it said.

The fund, SBI said ,would be raised either through follow on public issue, qualified institutional placement, rights issue, private placement, Global Depository Receipt, American Depository Receipt or combination of these.

02:50pm Sadbhav Engineering in News

Gammon Infra is set to acquire Sadbhav Engineering’s 20 percent stake in Mumbai-Nasik Expressway for Rs 72 crore. The company already owns the majority 80 percent in the BOT project.

Kishor Kumar Mohanty, MD, Gammon Infrastructure, said it makes an investment sense for both parties as Sadbhav was a minority stakeholder.

“As far as funding is concerned, it will be mostly through internal accruals but our monetization option in different operational projects is possible,” Mohanty said, adding that the company is also on the verge of completing three more projects in the next couple of months, which will give it a little headroom for “financial manoeuvring."

02:30pm Ajanta Pharma hits 52-week high

Ajanta Pharma's third quarter net profit jumped 23 percent year-on-year to Rs 84.7 crore led by strong growth in topline and operational income.

Net sales rose 21.8 percent to Rs 356.3 crore in the quarter ended December 2014 from Rs 292.6 crore in same quarter last fiscal. "Domestic business grew 35.6 percent Y-o-Y to Rs 135.4 crore and exports (which contributed 61 percent to total revenue) jumped 15 percent to Rs 224.08 crore during the quarter," said the company in its filing.

Emerging markets business reported a 15 percent growth year-on-year at Rs 223 crore and Africa business grew 4 percent to Rs 110 crore during the quarter. Asian region showed 25 percent growth at Rs 109 crore while Latin America revenue jumped 112 percent to Rs 4 crore.

Operating profit (EBITDA) spiked 40.6 percent on yearly basis to Rs 125 crore and margin surged 470 basis points to 35.1 percent in the third quarter of current financial year 2014-15.

02:00pm Market Check

The market is volatile with negative bias today, after hitting a record high of 8985 on the Nifty and 29708 on the Sensex. Capital goods, metals, power and select banks stocks. However, HDFC and Reliance Industries continued to support the market.

The 30-share BSE Sensex fell 130.54 points to 29440.50 and the 50-share NSE Nifty slipped 29.55 points to 8880.95. Nearly two shares declined for every share advancing on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Pramod Gubbi of Ambit Capital recommends buying India with a 2-3 years perspective. However, he says underlying recovery and corporate earnings are not upto mark yet.

Ranbaxy Labs fell 2 percent as the drug maker's third quarter net loss widened to Rs 1,030 crore compared to loss of Rs 159 crore in the year-ago period. Higher forex loss of Rs 132.6 crore (versus gain of Rs 10.1 crore Y-o-Y) and tax expenses of Rs 888.2 crore (Rs 98.1 crore in Q3FY14) impacted the bottomline.

Bharti Airtel topped the selling list, down nearly 5 percent followed by L&T, Tata Motors, Sesa Sterlite, HDFC Bank, Sun Pharma, HUL, Cipla, BHEL and Tata Steel with 1.4-4 percent loss.

However, HDFC gained more than 2 percent.

It is a mixed bag across global markets today. Asian markets like Shanghai closed with losses of more than 1 percent while Korea and Nikkei ended in the green. European markets are higher. Fed policy decision later this evening will be watched closely.

In the commodities space, the onslaught on crude continued, Brent crude fell more than 1 percent to USD 49 a barrel post a surge in US crude stockpiles and ahead of FOMC decision today.