Closing Bell: Sensex ends 269 points higher, Nifty above 11,400; IT stocks outshine

: Benchmark indices ended higher but off day's high on the back of last hour selling pressure.

The Sensex was up 269.43 points at 38024.32, while Nifty was up 83.60 points at 11,426.90. About 1172 shares have advanced, 1452 shares declined, and 162 shares are unchanged.

Among the gainers, Kotak Mahindra Bank rose 4%, followed by Power Grid Corp, TCS, ICICI Bank and SBI, while on the other hand HUL shed 2 percent, followed by Yes Bank, RIL, Bharti Airtel and ITC on the Sensex.

On the sectoral front, IT index has outperformed the other indices with nearly 2 percent gain followed by auto, infra, metal and pharma, while selling was seen in the FMCG space.

Nifty Bank continued its upward momentum as it ended 1.6 percent higher at 29381.50.

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Share price of BhartiAirtelfell 3.3 percent after Jefferies downgraded the stock to underperform from hold rating.

The stock is the top losers on the Sensex.Jefferies also cut its price target to Rs 270 from Rs 280.

Benchmark indices continued to trade higher on Friday withSensexgained over 400 points andNiftycrossed 11,450 mark with the help of bank andIT stocks.

At 14:38 hrs IST, theSensexis up 420.67 points at 38,175.56, while Nifty is up 124.40 points at 11,467.70. About 1224 shares have advanced, 1255 shares declined, and 152 shares are unchanged.

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The company board approved the buyback up to 2,82,100 fully paid-up equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each representing up to 1.2 percent of the total number of equity shares at a price of Rs 900 per equity share for an aggregate amount of up to Rs 25,38,90,000

:Prestige Estates Projects shares gained more than 4 percent after Deutsche Bank initiated coverage with a buy call on the stock, citing attractive valuations.

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The Indian rupee extended the gains after a flat start on Friday morning on the back foreign fund inflows and strong domestic market.It is trading at day's high around 69.05 per US dollar.

: Foreign research house maintained buy call on the stock with a target at Rs 2,100 per share.

It feels that moderation in volume growth is visible in Q4 and expect company to report volume growth of 7.5% YoY in Q4. It forecast sales/EBITDA / PAT growth of 11/15/16 percent for Q4.

Sources told CNBC-TV18 that HCC is close to securitising receivables related to arbitration claims.

A PE player is likely to buy out HCC's arbitration exposure for Rs 1,800 crore, sources said.

HCC’s arbitration exposure stood at around Rs 3,800 crore. Its gross debt was at Rs 3,490 crore as of December 2018, which was down by Rs 235 crore in nine-month period of FY19.

While asking above PE deal, HCC told CNBC-TV18 that the company does not comment on market speculation.