India’s steel demand grows marginally at 0.6% in FY14

India’s steel consumption grew at a four-year low rate of 0.6 percent in FY'14 to 73.93 million tonnes (MT) mainly impacted by a prevailing economic slowdown and high interest rates. As steel demand derived from construction and automobile sectors, the performance of the steel industry is therefore largely dependent on overall economic growth of the country. Steel consumption in the country grows by 1.2 to 1.3 percent of the GDP growth. Construction sector accounts for around 60 percent of the country's total steel demand while the automobile industry consumes 15 percent. Both sectors were plagued by a slowdown in the economy. Indian economy’s growth slowed down to a decade low at 4.5 percent in FY13 and 4.6 percent during the first three quarter of FY'14. Furthermore, financial year 2013 was also not good for the steel industry as well with steel consumption growing by a mere 3.3 percent on account of subdued demand. However, domestic steel consumption grew by 5.5 percent in FY'12 and 9.9 percent in FY'11. Domestic steel consumption is likely to remain under pressure in coming future on account of ongoing economic downturn. The government has been taking various measures to enhance the domestic steel demand. In previous month, it has relaxed the norms for import of steel and its products amid subdued domestic production. Over the past few years, domestic steel industry has been struggling with increased input cost, leading to decline in steel production. Further, low iron ore production, a main raw material for steel production, mainly in Goa and Karnataka region has not only hampered the capacity utilization of various steel players, but also led to significant rise in the cost of iron ore in the domestic market due to limited supplies.

SpiceJet unveils special promotional airfare offer

SpiceJet, the second largest low-cost airline has unveiled a 3 day special promotional airfare offer for travel originating in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Under this offer passengers can book their tickets with all inclusive fares starting at Rs 1,773 (from Hyderabad), Rs 1806 (from Vijayawada, Madurai, Rajahmundry & Tuticorin), Rs 1,859 (from Coimbatore & Tirupati), Rs 1,907 (from Chennai), Rs 2,009 (from Vizag) and Rs 2,123 (from Kolkata). The tickets could be booked till April 10, 2014 for travel between June one and July 31, 2014. This is the sixth discounted ticket sale SpiceJet has come up with in this calendar year. It comes less than a week after the carrier closed another discounted ticket sale that offered passengers the opportunity to fly for Rs 1. SpiceJet is India’s most preferred airline delivers the lowest air fares with the highest consumer value. The airline currently operates more than 350 daily flights to over 44 Indian cities and 9 international destinations.

Onmobile Global strengthens on executing non-binding MOU for disinvestment of ‘Voxmobili SA’

Onmobile Global is currently trading at Rs. 37.10, up by 3.00 points or 8.80 % from its previous closing of Rs. 34.10 on the BSE.

The scrip opened at Rs. 34.70 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 38.10 and Rs. 34.15 respectively. So far 853434 shares were traded on the counter.

The BSE group 'B' stock of face value Rs. 10 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 41.80 on 16-May-2013 and a 52 week low of Rs. 19.05 on 06-Aug-2013.

Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 35.20 and Rs. 33.05 respectively. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 425.53 crore.

The promoters holding in the company stood at 38.27 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 13.61 % and 48.12 % respectively.

OnMobile Global has executed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the potential divestment of its group company, Voxmobili SA, which specializes in mobile telecommunication products. The proposed deal will be subject to and contingent upon certain events, including applicable regulatory and shareholders’ approvals.

If the proposed deal were to consummate, the company could realize an amount ranging between $23 million to $26 million for the divestment of the said company, which is around its book value, subject to escrows and other conditions customarily contracted as a part of such a deal.

Onmobile Global offers contest management, content aggregation and distribution, voice short codes,  missed call alerts, multimedia push services, mobile advertising, mobile search, ringtones, ring back tones, personalized music greetings, mobile media portals, phone backup, voice portals, and voice SMS.

Bharti Airtel gains on entering into cross-border remittance partnership with MTN

Bharti Airtel is currently trading at Rs. 318.00, up by 0.30 points or 0.09% from its previous closing of Rs. 317.70 on the BSE.

The scrip opened at Rs. 318.60 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 319.75 and Rs. 317.35 respectively.

The BSE group 'A ' stock of face value Rs. 5 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 373.50 on 01-Nov-2013 and a 52 week low of Rs. 270.25 on 08-Apr-2013.

Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 328.50 and Rs. 312.00 respectively. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 126977.41 crore.

The promoters holding in the company stood at 65.23 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 24.53 % and 10.24 % respectively.

Bharti Airtel, country's largest telecom operator, has entered into a cross-border remittance partnership with South Africa's MTN Group to facilitate mobile money transfer between the two West African countries of Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. This new partnership would help both the operators’ customers on either side of the border. MTN and Airtel already enjoy great adoption of Mobile Money services in their respective footprints, and connecting their operations through remittance services appears a logical next step.

Bharti Airtel is a leading integrated telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top 5 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers.

Growth in credit demand from industries slowed down to 12.2% in February 2014

The growth in credit demand from industries slowed down to 12.2% to 19,970 crore in the month of February as compared to 18.9% growth in the same month of previous year. Prevailing economic slowdown coupled with political uncertainty associated with an election year have made corporates reluctant to launch any greenfield projects, resulting in declining credit demand from industrial sector. Slow credit flow to industrial sector has been adversely impacting domestic banks which are now pushing retail credit to boost credit growth. High borrowing cost and delays in environmental clearances for industrial and infrastructure projects has forced the big infrastructure players to defer their investment decisions. Indian large infrastructure companies such as HCC, Lanco and Gammon India are struggling with high debt and have restructured them to avoid loan default. The gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of banks would rise to 4.2-4.4% by March, from 4.1% reported in December 2013. Rising NPA levels have become an issue for growth of the banking industry, which is the most dominant segment of the financial sector and plays an important role in the economic development of the country. Banks help to channel savings into investments and encourage economic growth by allocating savings to investments that have potential to yield higher returns. Meanwhile, risk appetite of industrial firms is likely to improve after the formation of new government, which could provide a boost to credit growth.

Sun Pharma to acquire Ranbaxy in $4 billion deal

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd is to acquire 100 per cent of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd in an all-stock transaction, the companies announced on Monday.Their combination would create India’s largest pharmaceutical company and the world’s fifth-largest speciality and generics drugs company, according to a statement from Ranbaxy.The combined entity’s revenues are estimated at $4.2 billion.Ranbaxy shareholders will receive 0.8 shares in Sun Pharma for each Ranbaxy share.

Japan’s pharmaceutical Daiichi Sankyo Co, which has a majority stake in Ranbaxy, would become a significant shareholder of Sun Pharma after the transaction.Daiichi would also have the right to nominate one director to Sun Pharma’s board of directors.Ranbaxy, one of India’s largest drugs majors, has faced a string of problems recently with US drugs authorities.In January, the US Food and Drug Administration banned imports from a Ranbaxy unit in India due to quality control violations.In May 2013, an US subsidiary had to pay the drugs administrator $500 million in penalties for sale of below-quality drugs.

Crompton Greaves up 2% on USD 29 mn order in Indonesia

Shares of  Crompton Greaves jumped over 2 percent intraday on Friday as its power transformer plant at Indonesia bagged order worth USD 29 million. As part of the order, it will supply extra high voltage transformers for PT PLN‘s Indonesian electricity transmission network. “The order involves supply of 500kV, 275kV and 150kV power transformers, which will be installed across PT PLN’s transmission network in Java and Sumatra islands,” the company said.  The Indonesian plant will cater to markets such as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and South America. PT PLN (Perusahaan Listrik Negara) is the sole Indonesian government-owned corporation in electricity generation, transmission and distribution in Indonesia. The company informs that manufacturing of the new orders will done at its factory located in Bogor, Indonesia. The facility is equipped to design, manufacture and test transformers up to 550kV class locally in Indonesia.

Internal factors play larger role in dragging India’s growth: IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday reiterated that internal factors played a much larger role in pulling down India's economic growth, which slumped to a decade-low level of 4.5% in 2012-13, than external ones. The international organization in its ‘World Economic Outlook’ rather pointed that pullback in growth for some emerging market economies since 2012 was mostly attributable to internal factors for relatively large or closed economies such as China, India and Indonesia. The WEO chapter on emerging economies highlighted that in case of India, internal factors reduced growth from 2011 until the third quarter of 2012, but their contribution increased since late 2012. Also, giving credence to the argument that UPA-2 hampered India’s growth story, IMF underscored that the United Progressive Alliance’s rule during the last five years has been marked by multitude of scams, delay in decision making, resulting in a policy paralysis. India's economic growth, which touched 8.9% in 2010-11 slowed down to 6.7% in the following year and touched a decade-low of 4.5% in 2012-13. As for the 2013-14, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has pegged it at 4.9%. However, as per the projection of ADB and RBI, the growth in the current fiscal is likely to increase to 5.5%.

Currency trading turnover on USE falls 96% in 2 days

Turnover on the currency futures platform of the United Stock Exchange tumbled sharply in the last two days as the exchange gears up to sort out various issues.The exchange, which recorded an average daily turnover of ₹3,691 crore in March, saw turnover plunge 96 per cent to ₹146 crore on Wednesday. It dipped further to ₹145 crore on Thursday.Arindam Saha, Director (business development), USE, said the exchange had been planning to upgrade technology since December, but it was postponed twice and it would now be rolled out in June.“So participants may have turned a little sceptical and they probably want to wait and watch. We also have other issues. We do not have a clearing corporation of our own. The exchange is working on the problematic areas and we expect things to be normal soon,” he said.

Turnover on other currency trading platforms of the BSE, the NSE and the MCX Stock Exchange has also fallen, but not to the extent of the USE.On Thursday, turnover at the BSE fell to ₹3,867 crore, down from ₹4,586 crore registered on Wednesday. The exchange recorded an average daily turnover of ₹5,759 crore in March.Similarly, on the NSE, the largest among currency futures exchanges, turnover was down 7 per cent at ₹9,117 crore, on Thursday. In March, it registered an average daily turnover of ₹9,855 crore.

In contrast, MCX-SE, rattled by the ₹5,600-crore scam in its subsidiary National Spot Exchange, saw its turnover stabilise at ₹3,324 crore against ₹3,039 crore on Wednesday. However, the turnover was lower compared to the March average of ₹4,394 crore.

NMDC’s capex in 2013-14 higher at Rs 2,518 cr

NMDC has incurred its highest capital investment in a single year at Rs 2,518 crore in 2013-14 on various expansions and modernisation plans.“Pursuing its capital investment schemes, as against an envisaged target of Rs 2,720 crore for 2013—14, the company has incurred Rs 2,518 crore for its various expansion and diversification projects,” NMDC said in a statement.The company spent Rs 1,607 crore capital investment in the previous fiscal. In current fiscal, it plans to spend Rs 4,345 crore.

NMDC is developing two new mines — Deposit—11B iron ore project and Kumaraswamy iron ore mine — as part of its ongoing expansion programme.It is also setting up a three million tonnes per annum (mtpa) greenfield steel plant at Nagarnar in Chhattisgarh. All are at various stages of execution.

Meanwhile, production of the company during 2013—14 also touched a record at 30.18 mtpa, 11 per cent more than the previous year. Sales also grew by 16 per cent to 30.50 mtpa.The production of diamonds from the Panna mine in Madhya Pradesh also registered a 17 per cent growth at 37,047 carats in 2013—14 over 31,533 carats a year ago.