Mark To Market News

A Mint Mark to Market explainer on the impact of the coronavirus on the markets. Indian markets have corrected on the back of a global correction due to fears of the coronavirus epidemic. India is relatively immune to China as it constitutes 14% of imports and 5% of exports. A prolonged shutdown of manufacturing could impact supply chains and the availability of key raw materials.

Shares of the country’s largest infrastructure conglomerate, Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) increased 3.5% on Thursday morning even though the company’s December quarter results, which came after market hours on Wednesday disappointed on some counts. The firm’s last quarter performance mirrors the challenges in the Indian economy primarily of consumption slowdown, weak capex cycle and the prolonged liquidity crunch. Revenue from L&T’s core infrastructure segment declined by 5% year-on-year despite its huge order book worth Rs3.1 trillion. What explains the slow pace of execution?

Bajaj Finance investors now seem to be taking note of the consumption slowdown and the adverse impact that it can have on the lender’s financial performance. Bajaj Finance has said its assets under management increased by 35% for the December quarter, the slowest growth in last two years. What's worse, is that growth in new loans has dropped sharply to 13% from 23% in the September quarter. Bajaj Finance’s management had warned about the slowdown in AUM growth in the September quarter. However, the slowdown seems to be deeper than what the lender had anticipated.

Mid- and small-cap space continues to languish in 2019 as earnings growth has been low

SpiceJet has denied a news report that it plans to raise Rs750 crore through a qualified institutional place (QIP). Whether or not the company is looking to raise money, the fact is that the airline has extremely low amounts of cash on its books, and needs to bolster its balance sheet with a fund-raise sooner than later. As on 30 September, the airline had cash and cash equivalents worth Rs93 crore and a negative networth of about Rs850 crore.

The Midcap index was up last month outpacing the frontline Nifty 50. Some limited churn also seems to be happening from large-caps to midcaps. While, midcaps earnings tend to expand when GDP growth is strong, the weak economic growth will weigh on the midcap stocks. So what’s next for midcaps? Watch this video to find out.

The whistleblower compliant was sent to the company’s board on 20 September. Still, the board has no adequate response after a month has passed. If there is some element of truth to the claim about withholding information from the company’s board, it will create a huge wall of mistrust between the top management and the board. Some large investors may give Infosys the benefit of doubt, and brush off the allegations of a low-margin or a no-margin deal with a client as purely a business decision. Apart from Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys is the only other IT services stock that trades at relatively high valuations of over 20 times earnings. In order to ensure the whistleblower complaint doesn’t deal a major blow to this perception, the company’s board should act quickly in addressing investors’ concerns.

Excess supply means cement prices continue to be under pressure in south India. Add to this the rise in input costs

Infosys shares have outperformed Nifty IT index by 4.5% since Nandan Nilekani took over as chairman in late August 2017. But things aren’t as stable as they seem

For the half year ended 30 September, net profit increased robustly by 38% from a year earlier