For the week ended 13th April, 7 of the top-10 most valued companies added Rs67,860 crore in market valuation. ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank were the big gainers. In terms market cap accretion, ICICI Bank added Rs17,188 crore, HDFC Bank Rs15,065 crore, HDFC Ltd Rs10,558 crore, ITC Rs10,191 crore, Reliance Rs9,912 crore and SBI Rs4,641 crore. In terms of value losers, Infosys lost Rs13,898 crore and TCS gave up Rs11,654 crore, while HUL lost Rs6,955 crore. IT sector results were relatively tepid on the next year guidance front.
For the fiscal year FY23, power consumption grew 9.5% yoy to 1,503.65 billion units as per government data. Peak demand in a day increased yoy from 200.53 GW to 207.23 GW. Consumption of power is set to spike further in FY24 while the peak power demand is expected to touch 229 GW this summer. All coal based plants have also been asked to import and ensure proper stocking of coal. The rise in power usage has been driven by a revival of economic activity as well as higher spending power and a warmer summer.
Coal India increased its production of coking coal in FY23 by 17.2% to 54.6 MT. This sharp spike in the production of coking coal will come as a relief for the steel industry, where coking coal is a major input. The government has set Coal India a target of touching 105 MT of coking coal output by 2030. For CIL, the production of coking coal is handled by Bharat Coking Coal and Central Coal Fields. In FY23, India imported an equal quantum of 56 MT of coking coal, as coking coal is scarce in India and needs washing before use.
NTPC has dropped plans to get Petronas of Malaysia as a strategic investor in its green energy subsidiary. NTPC Green Energy (NGEL) plans to hit the IPO market with a plan to divest 25% of its stake. The stake sale would be through the book building route. NTPC had secured approval from the government to induct a strategic investor into NGEL. Clearly, NTPC did not find the Petronas offer of $460 million for a 20% stake in NGEL too attractive. India is aggressively planning to reach 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by year 2030.
Sterling & Wilson (the SP group company which was sold to Reliance) has reported 22-25% growth in its data centre business order book position, driven by rising demand from cloud service providers. S&W also sees demand for data centres from non-traditional sectors like educational institutions and miners. The Indian market for data centres is currently at 700 MW but expected to grow to 1,500 MW by 2025. The data centre EPC vertical of Sterling & Wilson already has an order book position of close to Rs 650 crore.
As India continues to buy Russian oil at a discount, Nirmala Sitharaman underlined at the IMF that India would buy even beyond the price cap, if the OPEC raised prices beyond a level. Buying oil from Russia above the price cap has larger repercussions, but for now the global community has been totally silent. Sitharaman reiterated at the IMF that India did not have a choice but to look for the best deal on oil since they import 80-85% of their daily crude requirements. India imports more crude from Russia than China.
FPIs were net buyers to the tune of Rs8,767 crore in Indian equities in April 2023 till date. However, these FPIs continued to remain bearish on IT stocks after Infosys and Wipro missed out on their guidance. FPI buying was focused on sectors like capital goods, financials, and construction. However, FPIs continued to be net sellers in the debt segment. The first half of April had been truncated by holidays so a clearer picture should emerge in the second half of April. The strength in INR and weakness in dollar also helped.
Invesco plans to sell its entire 5.65% holding in Zee Entertainment for a consideration of Rs1,130 crore. It had earlier sold 5.65% in Zee in October last year. The deal is expected to happen on Monday 17th April in the price range of Rs199.80 to Rs208.15 per share. Invesco has been gradually reducing its stake in Zee since it withdrew its demand seeking removal of Punit Goenka from the Zee board. At one point, Invesco had held more than 18% in Zee Entertainment but had been unhappy with the running of the company.