BSE Sensex, Nifty end flat; Bharti, TCS, HUL laggards

03:50 pm FM speaks: Concerned over the mounting level of bad loans, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today asked banks to take stern steps to recover advances from wilful defaulters.

"So banks must pay attention to the portfolio of non-performing assets, identify the wilful defaulters, take stern steps to recover loans from wilful defaulters even while helping others who are genuinely caught in business downturn to recover so that they can pay the loans in course of time.

NPAs, or bad loans, of public sector banks rose 28.5 percent to Rs 2.36 lakh crore in September last year from Rs 1.83 lakh crore in March 2013.

03:40 pm Market closing: The market on a flat note with focus on pharma, realty and telecom stocks.

The Sensex was down 42.29 points at 20334.27, and the Nifty ended at 6053.45, down 9.75 points. About 1313 shares have advanced, 1249 shares declined, and 145 shares are unchanged.

Dr Reddy's Labs, Sun Pharma, Maruti Suzuki, L&T and ONGC were top gainers in the Sensex. On the losing side were Bharti Airtel, TCS, HUL, HDFC and GAIL.

03:30 pm Stock in focus: The country’s biggest realtor, DLF , has been paid Rs 675 crore as refund towards the scrapped convention centre it was to develop as part of the preparation for the Commonwealth Games held in Delhi in 2010, reports CNBC-TV18 quoting sources.

The company had acquired a 35-acre plot by paying Rs 901 crore in 2007 to develop a convention centre that would house hotels, commercial complexes and meeting areas but the project got into a legal tussle with the Delhi Development Authority when DLF proposed to acquire a foreign partner for the same.

Sources say DLF has now agreed to forfeit Rs 225 crore of the amount it paid in 2007, ending a seven-year battle with the DDA. DLF, which has about Rs 19,000 crore of borrowings on its books, as per its March financials, has been looking to pare debt since some time by selling non-core assets.

03:20 pm Macro outlook: Even as economic growth is expected to rebound, banks in India are likely to remain “subdued” on the growth, profitability and asset quality fronts, a report by ratings major Standard & Poor’s has said.

Indian banks have been particularly hit on the asset quality front, with non-performing assets for the sector reaching nearly a decade high, reeling under the double whammy of high interest rates and weak economic growth.

"We expect weakness in banks' asset quality to persist for the next 12 months because the economic recovery is likely to be tepid, and it will take time for the domestic industry to recover and corporate balance sheet leverage to decline," Amit Pandey, credit analyst, Standard & Poor's, said.

03:10 pm Result: Lower income led India Cements' net profit to decline by 98 percent in the December quarter at Rs 42 lakh. The company had clocked Rs 26.12 crore net profit during the October-December period of the last fiscal, it said in a BSE filing.

Total income of India Cements, which has 10 plants with a combined capacity of 15.5 million tonnes per annum, fell to Rs 1,037.64 crore during the reporting quarter from Rs 1,083.88 crore a year earlier.

03:00 pm Big deal: Abu Dhabi National Energy Co (TAQA) , leading a consortium that plans to invest around USD 2 billion to acquire hydropower assets in India, expects to close the deal this quarter, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

TAQA, majority-owned by the Abu Dhabi government, is buying two hydropower plants owned by Jaiprakash Power Ventures in Himachal Pradesh.

The plants have a total capacity of 1,300 megawatts. TAQA plans to take a majority stake in the plants while India's IDFC Alternatives and PSP Investments, a Canadian pension fund manager, will hold minority stakes, the sources said.

"They are working to finalise it before the end of this quarter, reinforcing TAQA's confidence in the Indian market to complement its existing power generation business there," an Abu Dhabi source familiar with the matter said.

 02:50 pm Apollo Hospitals reported a marginal uptick of 4 percent in its bottomline at Rs 83.4 crore compared to Rs 80.6 crore a year ago. Total Income was up 16 percent from Rs 856 crore to Rs 993.3 crore. The stock was trading flat.

02:45pm Top losers in BSE S&P 500: Idea Cellular, Thomas Cook, Punj Lloyd, United Bank, Puravankara, JM Financial and Monnet Ispat were down in the range of 4 to 7 percent.

02:21pmMidcap buzzers:  In the midcap space, shares of Wockhardt, TV18, Apollo Tyres, Jubilant FoodWorks and Voltas were buzzing in trade today.

02:15pmRel Comm CEO satisfied with Q3 performance: Reliance Communications’ performance in the third quarter , in which it logged a 2.7 percent profit growth year-on-year along with a 1.9 percent rise in revenue, was “satisfying”, President & CEO (Wireless) Gurdeep Singh said. Read more 

02:10pm Shares of Indian pharmaceutical companies perceived as defensive gain on risk aversion after overseas investors sold Rs 267 crore worth of Indian shares on Friday, extending their selling streak to a seventh day, provisional exchange data shows, dealers say. Read more

Indian stocks took a breather today and the Nifty was consolidating around 6150 mark after a turbulent ride of nearly 200 points last week. European markets were also trading flat while Nikkei and Shanghai closed higher from the basket of Asian markets.

The Sensex was down 4 points at 20372.24, and the Nifty was down 1 point at 6062.30. The breadth of the market was positive. About 1264 shares advanced, 1093 shares declined, and 145 shares remain unchanged.

DLF, Maruti Suzuki, IDFC, Sun Pharma and Larsen were top gainers in the Nifty. Top losers in the Nifty were HUL, TCS, Jaiprakash Associates, Bharti Airtel and HDFC.