Sensex, Nifty consolidate; banks, IT under pressure

Moneycontrol Bureau

10:20am Adlabs lists: Adlabs Entertainment has opened lower by 10 percent at Rs 162.20 against issue price of Rs 180 apiece today, but immediately it showed some recovery from day's low of Rs 155.20.

The stock lost 5 percent to Rs 171 on the National Stock Exchange at 10:20 hours IST and it traded with volumes of 13,84,808 shares.

The public issue of Adlabs Entertainment, which subscribed 1.1 times, opened for subscription during March 10-17. The company raised nearly Rs 376 crore including Rs 60 crore anchor investment.

Adlabs, promoted by Manmohan Shetty (the former promoter of Adlabs Films) and Thrill Park, will utilise the net proceeds (fresh issue money) for partial repayment or pre-payment of the consortium loan and general corporate purposes. Consortium loan stood at Rs 1,100 crore and the company will use Rs 330 crore for repayment of this loan.

10:00am Market Check

Equity benchmarks continued to consolidate in morning trade after seeing strong uptrend last week. Banking & financials and technology stocks saw profit booking while pharma, auto and FMCG stocks gained.

The Sensex fell 21.52 points to 28238.62 and the Nifty declined 7.25 points to 8579. However, the broader markets outperformed benchmarks with the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices rising 0.5 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively.

About 1175 shares have advanced, 610 shares declined, and 125 shares are unchanged on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

HDFC topped the selling list, down 2 percent followed by HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, ICICI Bank, SBI and Tata Steel with 0.5-1 percent. Technology stocks like TCS and Infosys declined 0.2 percent ahead of fourth quarter earnings next week.

Wipro shed 1.3 percent after its chief business officer Satishchandra Doreswamy quit. Tata Power and BHEL too were down more than a percent.

However, Sun Pharma rallied 3.2 percent as it settled litigation for generic Angiomax with The Medicines Company, US. Tata Motors also gained 1.8 percent as the stock went ex-rights today. Shares of Mahindra & Mahindra, ONGC, Dr Reddy's Labs, Bharti Airtel, Cipla and Hindalco climbed 1-2 percent.