Continuing its up-move for the third straight day, cigarettes-to-FMCG conglomerate ITC managed to cross the Rs 5.04 trillion market capitalisation mark intraday on April 21, outgrowing HDFC Ltd in terms of value, briefly.
At 11:30am, the market capitalisation of ITC and HDFC were neck and neck at Rs 5.03 trillion. ITC was quoting at Rs 404.90 on the NSE, higher by 1.15 percent.
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On April 2o, ITC became the 11th listed Indian company to cross Rs 5-trillion market capitalisation after its shares touched a record high with a 21 percent surge so far this year.
Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services, HDFC Bank, Infosys, ICICI Bank, Hindustan Unilever, Life Insurance Corp Of India, State Bank of India, HDFC and Bharti Airtel have earlier achieved this milestone.
In fact, ITC's recent surge is slowly narrowing the gap in market capitalisation with India's second largest IT services company Infosys. The IT major's market cap currently stands at Rs 5.07 trillion.
ITC's 110 percent rally over the past two years has come on the back of consistent financial performance by its cigarettes, FMCG as well as hotels businesses. Volume growth in cigarettes has especially been stellar over the past two years. In FY22, it was up 14.5 percent year-on-year. In FY23, analysts peg the number at about 18 percent.
"Cigarette tax stability, backed by deterrent actions by enforcement agencies, allows for continuous volume recovery. On the technical setup, ITC is also showing a positive trend on the daily chart. In the following sessions, investors may retain their holdings with a goal of 420 levels," Ravi Singh, head of research at Share India, said.
GCL Broking has a target of Rs 470 on the stock for the next one year. "ITC has given 52 percent returns in comparison to HUL which has given 19 percent return in 1 year. We still think ITC will outperform over HUL," the firm said.
For Q4 FY23, the Street expects ITC's revenue to rise 9.3 percent on-year to Rs 16,972 crore and net profit to jump 17 percent on-year to Rs 4,907 crore.
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