Bharat Electronics on Wednesday scaled a 3-year high price of Rs.167 after a reporting a strong set of results. For the Mar-21 quarter, BEL reported 30.7% growth in PAT at Rs.1,352 crore even as the revenues were up by 19% at Rs.6,908 crore in the Mar-21 quarter. The EBITDA margins improved by nearly 300 basis points to 28.5%. As of the close of FY21, BEL had a robust order book position of Rs.53,434 crore, with orders worth Rs.15,800 crore coming in the current fiscal after the government in-sourcing decision.
India attracted FDI inflows of $6.24 billion in the month of Apr-21; 38% higher compared to the Apr-20 month. In 2020, India got nearly $64 billion in the form of fresh FDI. Some of the reform measures like FDI simplification, ease of doing business and Make in India initiatives have been responsible for the sharp inflow of FDI into India. In 2020, the FDI flows were higher by 2&% yoy. Global FDI flows were severely impacted by the COVID pandemic with total global FDI falling from $1.50 trillion to just about $1 trillion.
The Enforcement Directorate or ED transferred partial assets worth Rs.8,441 crore, to state-run banks from shares sold in cases relating to economic offenders like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. Between them, the 3 had defrauded PSU banks to the tune of Rs.22,586 crore. The total transfer of such attached assets came to Rs.9,371 crore, so at least 40% of the dues are recovered. The bigger battle is for the agencies to get offenders extradited to India to face the rule of law here for their economic offences.
The Kalrock Jain consortium has got the nod to operate Jet Airways from the NCLT, which cleared their resolution plan submitted. Jet has been grounded since April 2019 when it ran out of cash. Now the consortium will apply for requisite government approvals for the same. The new owners need to first make key recruitments in engineering, flight safety and operations. They also need to update all their operations manuals and submit to regulatory audit. This brings the insolvency process to a logical end.
SEBI has exempted Heineken International of the Netherlands from making open offer to the shareholders of United Breweries. This exemption specifically pertains to the proposed acquisition of 15% stake. This special exemption is for the shares acquired by Heineken from the Debt Recovery Tribunal towards the dues of Vijay Mallya and his group. Normally, Heineken being the promoter entity of UBL, this action would have triggered an open offer. The exemption was given as a special case to expedite the share sale.
The Rs.9,200 crore share buyback of Infosys will commence from June 25 as scheduled at a buyback price of Rs.1,750 per share. While the Board approval had come on 14-Apr, the regulatory approval only came on 19-Jun. Kotak Mahindra Capital will act as the manager to the buyback. Under the buyback offer, the company will buy back a maximum of 5.257 crore shares comprising nearly 1.23% of the paid-up equity. The buyback will be funded from the free reserves of Infosys taking year capital return to Rs.15,600 crore.
If one goes by the initial reports and the sound bites from the company, it does look like the big news at the RIL AGM on 24 June may be the proposed stake sale in its O2C business. Last year, the company had officially hived off its oil to chemicals business under a separate entity Reliance O2C Ltd. The stake sale talks with Aramco have revived and an announcement to this effect is expected. The launch of the Jio-Google phone is expected to be announced at the 44th AGM. Google and Jio may also look at a new O/S.
The RBI-appointed third party audit of HDFC Bank’s IT systems is completed and the final report has been submitted to RBI for final decision. This was confirmed by HDFC Bank CEO, Shashidhar Jagdishan. In Dec-20, RBI banned HDFC Bank from announcing any new digital launches including new credit cards or the Digital 2.0 plan. This happened after a series of technical glitches reported by the bank leading to massive inconvenience for the customers. HDFC Bank confirmed the glitches had nothing to do with handling scale.