The much awaited judgment by the Supreme Court on the telecom AGR issue is expected on 22 July. While Vodafone claimed arithmetic errors in the calculation, Airtel has claimed duplications and disallowed deductions. Currently, as per DOT, Bharti Airtel owes Rs.43,000 crore while Vodafone owes Rs.50,000 crore. In Oct-20, the Supreme Court had upheld that non-core business income must be added for arriving at annual AGR amount. Telecom companies have been allowed to stagger payments over next 10 years.
There were two robust numbers announced on Wednesday. Havells posted 269% growth in net profits at Rs.236 crore for Jun-21 quarter on the back of a 76% growth in revenues at Rs.2,610 crore. Growth was led by the Lloyds Consumer business growing 63%, cables 75% and electrical goods 91%. Jubilant Foods also turned around to a net profit of Rs.63 crore from a net loss of Rs.76 crore last year. Same store sales for Domino’s Pizza grew by 114% in Q1. Food delivery vertical grew 124%, offsetting weak dine-in sales.
Byju’s announced the acquisition of Epic, a digital reading platform for children. The consideration worked out to $500 million or Rs.3,750 crore. Byju’s also has aggressive plans to invest $1 billion towards tapping the vast North American market. For Byju’s, the buyout of Epic gives them access to 2 million teachers and 50 million children across the globe. The idea is to ally with Epic and create impactful experiences for children to become lifelong learners. Epic gets a much bigger balance sheet to fuel its expansion plans.
IDFC Limited, the promoter of IDFC Bank, has stated that it can now legitimately exit IDFC First Bank since the 5-year lock-in period had ended. The RBI circular clarifies that on expiry of the 5-year term, IDFC can exit its stake in IDFC First Bank. Currently, IDFC holds 36.56% stake in IDFC First Bank, which commenced operations in October 2015. It may be recollected that RBI had given a banking license to IDFC Bank along with Bandhan Bank in 2014. IDFC Bank and Capital First had merged in 2018 to become IDFC First Bank.
Rossari Biotech, a speciality chemicals manufacturer which had done its IPO last year, approved purchase of 100% stake in Tristar Intermediates, another niche player in the specialty chemicals space. While Rossari will buy 76% stake right away, the remaining 24% will be acquired over the next 3 years. The stake has been valued at an Enterprise Value of Rs.120 crore and will be funded by Rossari via internal cash resources. Tristar FY21 revenues were Rs.111 crore, EBITDA at Rs.15.60 crore and PAT at Rs.10.40 crore.
The Big-4 IT companies plan to recruit 110,000 freshers during the current year. While TCS will hire a tad over 40,000 freshers from campuses in India in FY22, Infosys plans to hire another 35,000 in the current fiscal year from campuses. To create quality digital talent, both the leaders will recruit fresh from campus and train them with the requisite skills. Meanwhile even Wipro plans to make over 10,000 lateral hires during the year while HCL Tech will onboard over 20,000 freshers. The focus in all the cases is digital skills.
The government has shortlisted 4 companies to pick up a potential 26% stake in Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML). As of now, Ashok Leyland, Bharat Forge, Tata Motors and Megha Engineering have made it to the shortlist. Interestingly, BEML makes military hardware including the Prithvi missile launcher and operates across defence, aerospace, mining, construction and railways. Government of India currently owns 57% in BEML and this will be a strategic divestment. Three out of four companies have strong defence divisions.
With banks and financial institutions flush with liquidity, they have been going overboard putting money in IPOs. In FY21 banks and financial institutions doubled their investment in IPOs to Rs.870 crore over FY19. Banks and financial institutions had infused a record Rs.4,548 crore into IPOs in 2017. Some of the banks that have been active investing in IPOs include IDBI Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, Axis Bank, Bank of India and Bank of Baroda. Banks have invested in IPOs like Clean Science, Lakshmi Organics and Sona Comstar.