For the week ended December 15, 2023, the market cap of the 10 most valuable companies on the NSE saw an accretion in value of Rs2,26,392 crore. Bharti was the only laggard, while IT led the rally. Among the gainers, TCS added market cap of Rs85,494 crore during the week, Infosys Rs36,794 crore, SBI Rs30,701 crore, Reliance Industries Rs26,386 crore, ICICI Bank Rs18,494 crore, LIC Rs14,295 crore and ITC Ltd Rs11,413 crore. The only loser in the week was Bharti Airtel. Nifty gained good 2.33% during the week.
Zee Entertainment has sought an extension to complete its proposed merger with Sony India. The current cut-off date is December 21, 2023, but that looks impractical. While, it was originally agreed that Punit Goenka will lead the combined entity, Sony had other thoughts after the SEBI order against Goenka. They felt it would result in uncertainty and impact valuations. On Friday, NCLAT had refused to grant a stay to stop the merger following a petition by Axis Finance and IDBI Bank. Case will be heard on January 8, 2024.
The takeover by Adani is showing on the performance of ACC and Ambuja Cements. Their EBITDA is now up at Rs1,350 per tonne from as low as Rs350 per tonne prior to Adani taking over both the companies. The next target is to scale up the EBITDA to Rs1,400 per tonne. Between Ambuja and ACC, the Adani group got about 30 cement plants with combined capacity of nearly 70 MTPA, and with its other acquisitions, the Adani group now has 85 MTPA of cement capacity. It targets to enhance this capacity to 150 MTPA.
There has been a sharp surge in number of GST return filers by 65% to 11.3 million in the 5 years to April 2023. It is not only a signal of improved compliance and less revenue leakage, but also a sign of greater shift of businesses towards organized mainstream. As per data shared by the ministry, 90% of eligible taxpayers are filing GSTR-3B returns; up from 68% in FY18. The average gross monthly mop-up in FY24 is at a record level of Rs1.66 trillion per month, with highest ever collections recorded in the month of April.
The forex reserves may not be anywhere close to the peak levels of $655 billion, but the good news is that it just touched a 5-month high and also closed decisively above the $600 billion mark. For the week to December 08, 2023, the forex reserves grew by $2.8 billion to $607 billion. The increase in the reserves during the week was on account of increase in foreign currency assets. Currency accretion has also been stemmed by the RBI continuously intervening the market and selling dollars, which reduces the reserves.
Pune-based Emcure Pharmaceuticals refiled its preliminary papers with SEBI to capitalize on the current buoyancy in the IPO markets. In the last few weeks, there has been a sharp turnaround in the IPO scene with big issues sailing through smoothly with substantial oversubscription. The IPO of Emcure Pharma will be a mix of fresh issue of Rs800 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of 1.37 crore equity shares by the existing shareholders. Promoters currently hold 82.97% in Emcure Pharma and rest is held by public shareholders.
The coming week promises to be a busy and robust week for IPOs. A total of 12 companies will open their IPOs this week and Rs4,600 crore will be raised in the process. With robust IIP growth, inflation in control and the Fed also turning dovish, the FPI flows have picked up substantially and that is favouring a surge in primary market collections. The trend of high volume of IPOs is likely to persist well into 2024. On the IPO mainboard, there will be 3 listings and 8 new issues with some key issues coming from SME segment also.
Adani group has acquired majority stake in news agency IANS India Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed sum to help the Adani group expand its presence in the media space. The deal was executed by AMG Media, which takes care of the media interests of the group. It acquired a 50.5% stake in IANS. In the recent past, the Adani Media Group has already acquired the NDTV business and Quintillion Business Media, which operates BQ Prime. All operational and management control of IANS will come under Adani Media group.