Firm trades continue; Infosys up 2.6%

Gains in IT shares continue to support market which surged after better than expected Infosys Q3 results and positive trade deficit numbers lifted sentiment

Key benchmark indices held on to their gains after data showed that trade deficit for December eased significantly year-on-year. The market sentiment was also boosted by IT major Infosys's Q3 earnings results, announced earlier in the day.

Infosys, the largest gainer among IT pack has rallied over 3% at Rs 3,567 after reporting a 19.4% quarter-on-quarter growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 2,875 crore for the quarter ended December 31 2013 (Q3). Analysts on an average had expected net profit of Rs 2,681 crore for the quarter.

The consolidated net revenues came in at Rs 13,026 crore, up 0.5% sequentially, the country’s second-largest software services provider said in a statement. Consolidated dollar revenue came in at $2,100 million.

Meanwhile, Infosys has raised the FY14 dollar revenue guidance to 11.5-12% from 9-10% earlier.

Infosys Chairman, N R Narayana Murthy, said he was not sorry to see as many as eight top level executives quit the company in a matter of a few months.

Speaking to analysts over chat, Murthy claimed that the Infosys was the first Indian company to set up a leadership institute.

India's exports grew 3.49% in December to $26.3 billion, while imports dipped 15.25%. Imports last month were $36.4 billion.

At 2:23 PM, the 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex was up 131 points at 20,844 levels and the 50-unit Nifty of the Nationa Stock Exchange (NSE) was quoting at 6,192, uo 34 points.

Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold shares worth a net Rs 3.74 crore on Thursday as per provisional data from the stock exchanges.

Asian share markets stayed soggy on Friday after Chinese trade data proved to be a mixed bag, leaving investors with little incentive to take positions ahead of the US jobs report.

While China's exports grew a little less than expected at 4.3% in December, from a year earlier, imports easily outpaced forecasts with an increase of 8.3%.

Back home, the rupee hit a one-week high of 61.94, its highest since January 2. Currently, the pair is trading at 61.85 versus its close of 62.07/08 on Thursday, tracking broad losses in the dollar versus other majors.

On the sectoral front, BSE IT and TECk are up over 2% followed by Oil & Gas and FMCG indices which are up between 1.4-1.6%, Capital Goods, Realty and Healthcare are the other gainers. However, BSE Metal, power and auto indices are currently losing at the BSE.

Shares of information technology (IT) companies are trading higher by up to 2.6% at Rs ,3543.10-a-piece after the IT major reported a better-than-expected October-December (Q3) quarter earnings.

Infosys, ITC, RIL (Reliance Industries Ltd) , Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and ONGC are the top Sensex gainers at this hour.

Other notable gainers are RIL, ONGC, Dr Reddy’s Lab, Bharti Airtel, ITC and Sun Pharma.

On the losing side, M&M, Coal India, Hindalco, Bajaj Auto and ICICI Bank have declined between 1-1.5%.

Shares of gold financing firms - Manappuram Finance and Muthoot Finance are trading higher by over 7%, extending their previous day’s 20% rally after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has revised upwards loan-to-value (LTV) norm for non-banking finance companies (NBFC) engaged in gold loans from 60% to 75%.

The broader markets are trading positive- BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices are up between -0.17 - 0.2%.

The market breadth in BSE remains marginally negative with 1142 shares advancing and 1191 shares declining.