Equity indices witness volatile trading, telecom stocks plunge after SC order

Equity benchmark indices see-sawed during early hours on Friday as investors mulled over mixed corporate earnings of the second fiscal quarter.

At 10:15 am, the BSE S & P Sensex was up by 16 points at 39,036 while the Nifty 50 edged higher by 7 points to 11,590. Sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) were mixed with Nifty auto, IT and pharma in the red.

Telecom stocks dropped a day after the Supreme Court rejected the operators' definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR). The judgement will negatively impact incumbent cash-strapped operators by over Rs 92,000 crore. Vodafone Idea plunged by 10.6 per cent to Rs 3.87 per share while Bharti Infratel was down by 6.6 per cent.

Shares of InterGlobe Aviation fell over 8 per cent after the company reported a net loss of Rs 1,062 crore for the second quarter ended September 30. Auto stocks like Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Motors and Hero MotoCorp suffered losses ranging between 1 and 1.6 per cent.

However, among the gainers were Bharat Petroleum Corporation, ITC, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and Infosys.

Meanwhile, Asian shares inched up tracking small gains in world markets as positive earnings offset economic growth concerns. MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.13 per cent higher while Japan's Nikkei ticked up by 0.15 per cent.