The biggest earnest money deposit (EMD) of Rs14,000 crore has come from Reliance Jio Infocomm ahead of its 5G auction participation. Jio was followed by Bharti Airtel with EMD of Rs5,500 crore. Vodafone Idea has put in EMD of Rs2,200 crore while Adani Networks has just put in Rs100 crore. Eligibility points for Jio based on EMD stands at 159,830, followed by Bharti Airtel at 66,330 and Vodafone Idea at 29,370 points. A total of 72 GHz (gigahertz) of spectrum worth Rs4.30 trillion will be put on the block during the auction.
It was a historic low for the Indian rupee as it briefly touched Rs80/$ before closing the day perilously close to the psychological mark at Rs79.98/$. Monday saw a sharp surge in crude oil prices while FPI selling has continued in July too. However, the dollar was relatively soft on Monday after several Fed officials indicated they were not in favour of stepping up the rate hike momentum. For now, the INR is expected to trade in the range of Rs79.70 to Rs80.20 to the dollar. A more dovish Fed should help rupee strengthen.
EPFO, which manages the retirement corpus of millions of Indian employees, may approve enhancing its investments in equites from 15% to 20%. This decision is likely in the EPFO Trustees meet on 29th and 30th July. Of course, 20% will be the outer limit with the EPFO having the leeway to invest between 5% and 20% of the corpus in equities. The notional return on EPFO equity-related investments rose 16.27% in FY22 compared to 14.67% in FY21. In FY22, EPFO had seen withdrawals to the tune of Rs104,959 crore.
Just days after Nomura cut India’s GDP growth projections by 70 bps to 4.7%, Morgan Stanley followed suit. For FY23, Morgan Stanley downsized GDP India growth estimates by 40 bps to 7.2%. Morgan Stanley has attributed this growth downgrade to weak global growth, supply-side shocks on commodity prices and faster than expected monetary tightening. For calendar 2022, Morgan Stanley has downsized global growth sharply from 4.7% to 1.5%. Morgan Stanley expects India to benefit from fall in commodity prices.
The stock of Bharat Electronics surged by 5% to Rs259 after the company reported a sharp spike in net profit to Rs431.49 crore in Q1FY23. BEL’s order book position stood at a whopping Rs55,333 crore. Even the volumes were up 10-fold on Monday. EBITDA margins improved multi-fold to 16.5% on better fixed cost absorption in the quarter. Its order book stands at 3.3 times revenues. What has kept the BEL stock buoyant is a combination of robust order flows, strong margins and diversification into non-defence areas.
L&T surged 3% to Rs1,734 after its realty arm signed 3 projects worth $1 billion in the MMR (Mumbai Metropolitan Region) area. L&T is already up 18% in the last one month. The projects will be spread over
South Mumbai, Western Suburbs and Thane with development potential of 4.4 million SFT. L&T Realty plans to add 5 million SFT per year over next 5 years. L&T has an existing portfolio of 70 million SFT across Residential and commercial projects in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, NCR and Hyderabad.
Anil Agarwal of Vedanta group has expressed confidence that India had the potential to produce crude oil at one-fourth the import price. This was, of course, subject to allowing more private sector participation in exploration and production. This statement was made in the light of the INR approaching 80/$ amidst record trade deficit of $26.18 billion in June 2022. He called for a total overhaul of the mining and the oil exploration policy in India to unleash its true potential. Vedanta was in the race to take control of BPCL.
The recently revived Jet Airways may be inching close to a deal to buy a total of 50 A220 jets from Airbus. Jet has been grounded since April 2019 before it was eventually taken over by Jalan-Kalrock consortium. Jet has already got its air operator certificate (AOC) revalidated by DGCA. Initially, Jet will be flying only on domestic routes. However, Jet will face stiff competition from a rejuvenated Air India and the emerging Akasa Airlines, backed by Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. Tatas and Akasa will also be placing major aircraft orders.
