Sensex down nearly 100 points; Bharti Airtel loses 2%

Coal India, HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel, Dr Reddys Lab and RIL are the top losers

Benchmark indices have extended losses after paring early gains as the losses in select index heavyweights like ITC and ICICI Bank have limited the gains in information technology  and  select financial stocks.
 
Investors will watch for the fiscal deficit numbers for the first nine months of the financial year to be release later today.
 
At 9:58AM, the 30-share Sensex was down 111 points at 29,564 and the 50-share Nifty was down 31 points at 8,921.
 

The Sensex has hit the all-time high of 29,844.16 and Nifty has touched the life-time high of 8,996.60 in today's session.
 

In the broader market, both the BSE Midcap index, up 0.6% and Smallcap index, up 0.4%, have performed better than the front-liners. Market breadth in BSE is positive with 1,001 advances against 497 declines.     
 
Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors were net buyers in Indian equities worth Rs 1,723.77 crore on Thursday, as per provisional stock exchange data
 
Buzzing Stocks
 
6 of the 12 sectoral indices of BSE are in green. BSE Realty index has gained 1.6% and is the top gainer followed by BSE IT index, up 1.4% and BSE Capital Goods index, up 0.5%.
 
Coal India has declined over 3% after the government’s offer for sale (OFS) opened for subscription on Friday. The floor price — the base price at which it intends to sell its 10 per cent stake in Coal India — has been set at Rs 358 a share, translating into a 4.5% discount to Thursday’s closing price.

 
IT shares are trading higher tracking the strong gains in HCL Tech which has gained around 7% on better-than-expected Q2 results. Wipro has gained 1.3%, Infosys is up 0.5% and TCS is up 0.8%.
 
IT major HCL Tech today reported a Q2 net profit of Rs 1,915 crore, up 2.3% sequentially. On a year-on-year basis, the net profit was up 28%.
 
Adani Enterprises, the holding company of the Adani group, is set to restructure the shareholding of group companies to offer its shareholders stakes in its listed power and port subsidiaries. Adani Enterprise has gained over 4%

 
Tata Motors has gained around 0.4%. According to media reports, Tata Motors plans to raise its capital expenditure by Rs 10,000 crore a year as it strives to make a strong comeback in the domestic market.
 
Bharti Airtel has declined over 2%. Airtel M Commerce Services Ltd (AMSL), a wholly owned subsidiary of the country’s largest telecom service provider Bharti Airtel, said on Thursday that it would apply to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a licence and Kotak Mahindra Bank will acquire 19.90 per cent stake in it. Currently, AMSL offers mobile money services under the brand name Airtel Money.

 
Dr Reddys Lab has declined around 2% after  reporting  a 7.1% decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 574.5 crore for the quarter ended December on the back of higher operational costs and subdued revenue growth particularly in the most profitable US market.
 
ICICI Bank is down 0.5% ahead of the release of its quarterly result later today.
 
Sesa Sterlite reported a better-than-expected consolidated net profit of Rs 1,588 crore in the December quarter mainly because of a Rs 393-crore foreign exchange gain and due to lower finance cost. The stock is down 0.5%.
 
BHEL has declined around 0.3%. The company has announced commissioning of 600 MW thermal power project in Odisha.