Telecom infra stocks in focus; Birla Cable, Sterlite Tech surge up to 20%

Shares of telecom infrastructure companies were in focus as they rallied up to 20 per cent on the BSE in Monday’s intra-day trade after the Union Cabinet approved an allotment of around Rs 1.3 trillion for the next phase of BharatNet.

Birla Cable, Universal Cables and Vindya Telelinks hit their respective 52-week highs and zoomed up to 20 per cent, while Sterlite Technologies and HFCL rallied 8 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.

Birla Cable was locked at the 20 per cent upper circuit at Rs 225.40, also its 52-week high on the BSE. The average trading volume at the counter jumped nearly 8-fold. As many as 458,000 shares changed hands and there were pending buy orders for 36,314 shares on the BSE. The company is engaged in manufacturing and sale of cables (comprising of telecommunications cables, other types of wires & cables etc.).

Shares of Universal Cables too hit 52-week high of Rs 523, as they soared 17 per cent on the BSE in intra-day trade. The company is predominantly engaged in the business of manufacturing a large range of Power Cables from 1.1kV to 400kV, Capacitors and Capacitor Banks, Turnkey Projects relating thereto and other types of wires and cables, conductors, etc.

Vindya Telelinks surged 11 per cent to Rs 2,288.50 on the BSE. The company is primarily engaged in the business of manufacturing and sale of a variety of telecommunication cables including optical fibre cables conforming to various national and international specifications.

Sterlite Technologies gained 8 per cent to Rs 163.95, and has rallied 11 per cent in past two days after the company said it won an order worth Rs 250 crore for building and maintaining data centres for a public sector entity. The company is a leading global optical and digital solutions company providing advanced offerings to build 5G, Rural, FTTx, Enterprise and Data Centre networks.

The Union Cabinet on Friday approved Rs 1.3 trillion ($17 billion) worth of investments to drive the next stage of the government's ambitious BharatNet project which aims to provide every Indian village with fixed-line broadband connectivity a top official from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said.

The Cabinet meeting also saw the adoption of a new operational model to drive the next stage of the project, which aims to cover 674,000 villages under 250,000 gram panchayats nationwide within the next two months.

According to ICICI Securities this is will a huge opportunity for players like Sterlite Technologies, HFCL, Tejas Networks, Vindhya Telelinks in terms of optical fiber cable, equipment and EPC work. Nonetheless, key will be consistency in payment as last cycle had seen delays and bulging up debtor cycles, the brokerage firm said in a note.