FY24 was a special year in the stock market for IPOs with 75 IPOs raising Rs61,915 crore. In terms of number of IPOs, this is the highest count in last 2 years. This compares favourably with 37 IPOs raising Rs52,116 crore in FY23. The IPO story in FY24 was dominated by big ticket IPOs like IREDA, Tata Technologies, JSW Infra, Cello, Mankind Pharma etc. The oversubscription was also quite strong across the IPOs. Out of 75 IPOs launched, 54 IPOs were subscribed more than 10 times. IREDA was the star performer with 4X returns post listing.
For the week, 7 out of the 10 most valuable listed companies by market saw value accretion of Rs67,260 crore. Reliance emerged the biggest gainer in the truncated week after the Goldman Sachs upgrade. Among gainers, Reliance market cap spiked by Rs45,263 crore, SBI Rs5,533 crore, LIC Rs5,218 crore ICICI Bank Rs4,133 crore, HDFC Bank Rs4,030 crore, and Hindustan Unilever Rs2,820 crore. Among the losers, TCS fell by Rs10,692 crore, Infosys Rs4,163 crore and Bharti Airtel Rs3,817 crore on IT spending concerns.
Dividend receipts of the central government from CPSEs exceeded even the revised budget estimate by a full 26% at Rs63,000 crore, compared to the revised estimate of Rs50,000 crore. There were handsome dividend payouts by Coal India, ONGC, Powergrid and GAIL. In FY23, the dividend receipts of the central government stood at Rs59,953 crore. Now the government has made it mandatory for PSUs sitting on cash piles to distribute dividends liberally. Combined market cap of CPSEs has grown 500% in last 3 years.
PSU power behemoth, NTPC Ltd, logged record annual electricity generation of 422 billion units in FY24, as per data released by the Power Ministry. This was also helped by the NTPC thermal plants achieving
plant load factor (PLF), of 77%. This is 6% higher than FY23. In the last one year, Coal India has boosted output to ensure that thermal power companies do not face coal shortages. While thermal power still remains the bread and butter of NTPC, it is aggressively foraying into various green energy solutions too.
One of India’s youngest fund houses, Zerodha, has seen its AUM pick up momentum rapidly. IN the last 40 days, Zerodha AMC saw its AUM double from Rs500 crore to Rs1,000 crore. Zerodha has decided to adopt a passive first approach to retail investing via the mutual funds route. Today, there are about 45 asset management companies and the Jio Blackrock joint venture is also expected to go live in the next one year, once again, with a focus largely on the passive funds. India MF AUM stands at Rs54.54 trillion.
The Nifty-50 index closed the fiscal year FY24 with gains of an impressive 29%. That is the Nifty’s best show since FY21. Fiscal FY24 also saw mid-caps and small caps gain 60% and 70% respectively, even after factoring in the late correction in smaller stocks. All the three indices closed at their record highs at the close of FY24. India’s market cap is now rapidly approaching the $5 trillion mark, overtaking Hong Kong in the process. Markets weathered headwinds like inflation, volatility, liquidity, and Red Sea crisis in FY24.
There is finally good news that Indian large cap funds are now more emphatically beating the index returns in FY24. This is a sharp improvement over FY23. This report was put out by the S&P Indices Versus Active Funds (SPIVA) report. In calendar year 2023, 48% of large cap funds outperformed the index over a 1 year period. However, if you look at 3 years and 5-year returns, then the percentage of outperformers falls close to 12-14%. Apart from the large caps, even the mid-caps and the small caps proved to be laggards.
Infosys may be in for a windfall as it could get an income tax refund of Rs6,329 crore from the ITD. This pertains to financial years between FY07 and FY19. The total refund, including interest, works out to Rs6,329 crore. Infosys is likely to declare its financial results for Q4-FY24 on April 18, 2024. Infosys is currently evaluating the implications of these likely refunds on the financial statements of the company. If the demand is finally accepted by the government, it would be a significant windfall gain for Infosys Ltd.