Tata Motors has reportedly secured clearance from the Gujarat government for its proposed takeover of the passenger car manufacturing plant of Ford Motor Company. The plant is located at Sanand, which is about 30 kilometres from Ahmedabad. It may be recollected that the Ford plant in Sanand had already ceased operations in April last year. As of now, a number of issues pertaining to deal size, labour issues, financials, duty benefits etc are yet to be ironed out. Tatas will also get all state benefits offered to Ford.
For the week ended 27th May 2022, overall market cap of 7 of the 10 most valuable companies on NSE increased by Rs116,048 crore. The biggest gainer for the week was HDFC Bank adding Rs39,359 crore. Other gainers included Kotak Bank Rs23,231 crore, HDFC Ltd Rs23,142 crore, ICICI Bank Rs21,047 crore and SBI Rs5,801 crore. RIL was the big loser at Rs31,762 crore on windfall tax fears. Among other losers, TCS gave up Rs11,599 crore while LIC gave up Rs2,973 crore. LIC is the latest entrant into the Top-10 list.
DCCDL, the rental arm of DLF, saw 10% growth in rental income for FY22 at Rs3,350 crore. This was led by recovery of business at shopping malls. DLF Cyber City Developers Ltd (DCCDL) houses the rent yielding commercial properties of the DLF group. DCCDL is a joint venture of DLF and GIC, the Singapore SWF. Its commercial portfolio stands at 37.9 million SFT of which 34 million SFT is office space and rest is retail space. DLF owns 67% in DCCDL while GIC of Singapore owns 33%. DCCDL has net debt of Rs19,063 crore.
ONGC reported record net profits of Rs40,305 crore on record realizations per barrel of crude. It closed FY22 as India’s second most profitable company after Reliance. The average crude realization for FY22 was $76.62/bbl compared to Rs42.78/bbl in FY21. In 2008, ONGC had seen record crude prices but its net realizations were lower than as it had to provide subsidies to fuel retailers. Now, ONGC prices crude at the global rates. However, with the windfall tax to be imposed on ONGC, it would be back to Square One.
Three key IPOs are expected to list on the stock exchanges in the coming week. However, there are no fresh IPOs that are opening. Among the listings, it begins with the Ethos listing on Monday. Ethos is a high-end luxury watch retailer selling some of the biggest global brands from Omega to Baume & Mercier. The IPO of eMudhra lists on Wednesday. eMudhra is India’s leading certifying authority for digital signatures. On Friday, Aether Industries, which is a leading speciality chemicals player, will also list on the exchanges.
The US once again surpassed China to become India’s largest trading partner for FY22. As per Commerce Ministry data, bilateral trade between the US and India for FY22 increased 50% to $119.42 billion. Export of goods to the US were $76.11 billion while imports were $43.31 billion giving India a US trade surplus of $32.80 billion. Indo-China trade fell short at $115.42 billion, but India ran a huge trade deficit of $72.91 billion with China. The other major trading partners for India were UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Singapore.
Coal India, which has 80% share in coal mining in India, will import coal for use in thermal plants due to a massive shortage in India. This will be the first time since 2015 that Coal India will import coal as India stares at another major power crisis in July and August. This is due to higher electricity demand in the next quarter. India has already urged utilities to increase imports to blend with local coal to avoid an all-out coal crisis. Coal inventories at power plants fell by about 13% since April 2022, making a likely crisis.
Amidst a hue and cry over the safety features of Aadhar, India withdrew a warning dissuading people from sharing photocopies of their Aadhar card. Earlier, a government note had warned that such data could be misused, raising data integrity concerns. PIB, later, clarified that the warning was issued to caution about edited Aadhar Cards. Establishments like hotels and movie halls collect photocopies of Aadhar as a proof of identity. However, people have the choice of sharing masked Aadhar rather than just spreading panic.
