Listless mkt ends flat for 3rd day, ICICI Bank up 2%

The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty closed listless trade flat for the third consecutive session on Friday. ICICI Bank topped the buying list after better than expected numbers for Q4. Technology stocks too helped the market while State Bank of India, Reliance, BHEL, L&T and ITC were under pressure.

The BSE benchmark rose just 3.58 points, to close at 17,134.25 after hitting an intraday high of 17,242.15 and low of 17,022.09. Meanwhile, the NSE benchmark gained 1.6 points at 5,190.60 on first day of May series.

The Sensex opened with more than 100 points gains today, but the fall in European markets due to Spain downgrade dragged Indian equities down in afternoon trade. France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE rebounded with moderate gains later on, but our markets stayed flat with a negative bias.

Back home, country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank gained as much as 3.91% intraday after its net profit jumped a whopping 31% year-on-year to Rs 1,902 crore and net interest income increased 23.7% to Rs 3,104 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2012. The stock rose 2.28% at close.

Another lender Axis Bank went up 1.6% ahead of quarterly numbers today while rival State Bank of India tanked 1.5%.

TCS and Infosys, India's largest software service exporters rallied over 1% whereas rival Wipro was up 0.5%.

Aluminium major Hindalco gained over 2%. Mahindra and Mahindra, top utility vehicle maker moved up 1% ahead of sales numbers for April.

However, oil & gas producers Reliance Industries and ONGC declined 0.5% each. State-owned capital goods company BHEL fell 1.5% while engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro was down just 0.3%.

Top telecom operator Bharti Airtel slipped 0.5% after overseas rating agency Fitch Ratings says company's outlook is negative, citing Bharti's exposure to adverse regulatory changes in India, which could result in higher-than-expected cash outflows compared with Fitch's base case expectations. Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications too were down 2-3%.

Reactions to earnings

Biocon gained 4% after pharmaceutical company reported better than expected topline as well as bottomline numbers in its fourth quarter of FY12. Its net profit fell 3% to Rs 98 crore in the January-March quarter of 2012 while analysts on average expected at Rs 86.2 crore.

Indiabulls Financial Services moved up over 4% as the company reported a growth of 28.4% year-on-year in its consolidated profit after tax of Rs 303 crore for the fourth quarter of FY12. Consolidated total income from operations increased a whopping 45.54% to Rs 1,109 crore.

Shares of Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) plunged 5.6% after company reported a higher than expected net loss of Rs 54 crore for the fourth quarter of FY12 while analysts on average had expected a loss of Rs 20 crore. The company had reported a profit of Rs 23 crore in the corresponding quarter of last fiscal.

Declining shares outnumbered advancing by 882 to 552 on the National Stock Exchange.