For the week ended 03rd March 2023, 5 of the top 10 most valuable companies by market cap on the NSE added Rs88,605 crore in market value. The gains were led by banks. Among the companies making big gains last week, SBI added Rs35,832 crore to its market cap, ICICI Bank Rs20,360 crore and HDFC Bank added Rs13,052 crore. Other gainer was Bharti Airtel Rs4,124 crore. Among losers, Infosys lost Rs30,151 crore, TCS Rs20,966, Hindustan Unilever Rs3,336 and Reliance Rs507 crore. ITC was flat during the week.
Lower prices are leading to record imports of crude oil by India from Russia. For February 2023, imports of oil from Russia soared to a record 1.62 million bpd (barrels per day), which is more than India’s imports of crude from Iraq and Saudi Arabia combined. Russia’s share in India’s crude import basket stands at 35%. Russia had a market share of just 1% in Indian crude imports prior to the Russia-Ukraine war. India is the world’s third largest crude oil importer after the US and China. The OPEC touched a 16-month low.
The Adani Group plans to hold fixed-income road shows in the month of March 2023 across key financial centres like London, Dubai and the United States. The idea of these roadshows is to make a strong pitch to potential and existing lenders that the fundamentals of the Adani group continue to be strong. The group had come under a lot of pressure after Hindenburg Research had issued a scathing report on the Adani group. The top management will attend the roadshows including the group CFO, Jugeshinder Singh.
Nippon Paints, a niche paint manufacturer, will foray into the Rs12,500 crore construction chemicals market. It is currently focused on paints and coating products. The new business of Nippon Paints will focus on construction, post-construction, and repairs & maintenance. This will also increase dealer touch points by 50%. Nippon Paints expects the growing urbanisation trend to drive demand for this category. Its Chennai unit will manufacture liquid-based products while aerosol-based products will be outsourced.
Apple will consolidate its production base in India through its key contract manufacturer, Foxconn. It will set up a new factory in Bengaluru to manufacture iPhones at an investment of $700 million. The project is likely to create another 100,000 jobs. Currently, Foxconn manufactures iPhones in Tamil Nadu under the PLI scheme of the government. Two other iPhone contract manufacturers; Pegatron and Wistron also make iPhones in India under PLI scheme. Apple’s FY23 exports from India are pegged at Rs75,000 crore.
China set a very modest target to grow real GDP at just 5% for 2023, much lower than its average growth in the last 10 years. China will prioritize economic stability and the creation of 12 million urban jobs in the current year. In 2022, real GDP in China grew at just 3% due to COVID related curbs. However, these curbs have now been fully lifted. However, the growth is likely to be hit by the weak property sector in China and tepid demand for its exports engine. China also widened its budget deficit target from 2.8% to 3.0%.
According to Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, India is likely to scale overall exports (merchandise + service exports) of $750 billion in 2022-23. India had already scaled $676 billion of overall exports in 2021-22. India had already touched $641 billion of overall exports in the first 10 months of FY23 so this target of $750 billion for the full fiscal is perfectly achievable. While merchandise exports have growth just 8.5% in FY23 due to weak demand, India saw a 31.9% surge in services exports in this year.
Tech Mahindra plans to invest Rs700 crore into its newly carved products and platforms unit in order to scale this into a $1 billion business. Tech Mahindra had recently acquired Comviva to create products and platforms for the telecom sector. Now all other product and platform offerings are being merged into Comviva. Currently, the total revenues of the products and platforms business stands at $450 million, which can be quickly scaled up to $1 billion. This step will help Tech Mahindra improve operating margins.