For the calendar year 2023, the global merchandise trade fell by 5% yoy, although the real Red Sea impact was more pronounced in the first quarter of 2024. However, UNCTAD expects the current year growth to be positive. Despite the pressures, Indian exports have been fairly resilient on the goods front. This year, UNCTAD sees positive growth, despite the ongoing Red Sea crisis. The crisis in the Red Sea has led to most ships taking the longer Horn of Africa route, which has pushed up freight rates and also insurance costs.
Vedanta Ltd plans to invest close to $6 billion across businesses like aluminium, zinc, iron ore, steel, and oil & gas. This is likely to add $2.50 billion to its annual EBITDA. The company has several ongoing product expansions going on. For now, the parent company Vedanta Resources PLC is battling a cash crunch and has been looking at ways and means to monetize its existing assets. Recent plans to demerge its various businesses into separate verticals ran into trouble with shareholders, including the central government.
Blame it on the technology stocks, as the combined market cap of 5 of the 10 most valuable stocks on the NSE by value saw erosion of Rs1,97,959 crore in the previous week. Nifty was up 33 bps in the week. Value erosion was seen in TCS to the tune of Rs1,10,135 crore, Infosys Rs52,291 crore, Hindustan Unilever Rs16,835 crore, LIC Rs11,701 crore and HDFC Bank Rs6,997 crore. Among gainers, Reliance up Rs49,153 crore, SBI Rs12,852 crore, ITC Ltd Rs11,109 crore, Bharti Airtel Rs9,431 crore and ICICI Bank Rs8,192 crore.
Religare Enterprises is facing intense dissent from shareholders with both its resolutions failing to obtain requisite share of votes. Religare floated 2 resolutions to invest Rs15 crore in MIC Insurance Web and to amend its Articles of Association (AOA). Both, being special resolutions, needed 75% votes in favour and both fell short of that mark. This comes on the face of a public spat between Religare board and the Dabur promoters, who had made a bid to buy an additional stake in Religare for Rs2,116 crore at Rs235 a share.
NMDC Ltd, one of India’s foremost pure mining company, is currently exploring lithium assets in Africa and Australia. It is already in negotiations to acquire mines in these places to ensure that India is able to tie up its lithium ion supplies, if it wants to make a mark in the global green energy space. Being a state owned company, NMDC prefers the reservation route over the auction route. In June 2023, NMDC unit, Legacy Iron Ore had signed a lithium exploration pact with Australia-based Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd.
SEBI is not clamping down on Indian mutual funds and FOFs (fund of funds) investing abroad. This product had attracted a lot of interest from HNI investors, as a means to diversify their risk. Their AUM stands at Rs70,000 crore. Last week, SEBI asked these global ETFs to stop accepting inflows into such funds. Outlays to overseas securities has a limit of $7 billion, which was breached in 2022. Now, the limit of $1 billion for global ETFs is also about to be breached, hence the government restriction. This is despite LRS restrictions
Data put out by the Coal Ministry has underlined that Indian production of coal and lignite crossed 1 billion tonnes as of mid-March 2023; clearly surpassing last financial year’s output of 937.20 million tonnes. This is over and above the 96 million tonnes of coal stocks already with coal companies. Coal stocks at Coal India stood at 82.3 million tonnes. The thermal power generators remain the largest consumers of coal. This led to the share of coal imports falling to 21% this year. This is a great boost to India’s energy security. Post the ban on Paytm Payments Bank, brokerage house, Motilal Oswal, expects Paytm FY25E revenue to fall 24% and contribution profits to fall 30%. Most brokers have already downgraded their view on the stock while Motilal has maintained a Hold on the stock. The report also stated that the growth trajectory is likely to be disrupted and that could mean loss of customers. It is currently operating as a third party UPI app and has tied up with banks for the same. Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) fell sharply in February.
