Budget rally

Nifty50: 17,339 ▲ 237 (+1.3%)

Sensex: 58,014 ▲ 813 (+1.4%)

• The markets opened gap-up and remained strong throughout the day ahead of the Union Budget tomorrow.
• The positive cues from international indices and relief that India would meet its fiscal deficit target buoyed investor sentiments.
  Meanwhile, the rise in India Vix indicates that traders' volatility will rise going ahead.

All the Nifty sectoral indices closed in the green with Realty (+3.1%) and PSU Bank (+2.9%) being the top gainers

For more updates on F&O, click here.

Here are the top stories of the day.

Muted ‘ting ting ti-ding’ for Britannia

The biscuit maker profit dipped 19% year-on-year to ₹371 crore. The profit fell despite a 14% growth in revenue to ₹3,531 crore.

The profits were impacted by high commodity prices, which saw a steep rise of 20%. Meanwhile, the management plans to take a price hike of 10% in the March quarter to tackle rising raw material prices.

L&T revenue grows but profit tumbles

The infrastructure major’s consolidated revenue grew 11% year-on-year to ₹39,563 crore, driven by 16% growth in the infrastructure segment. However, the net profit declined 17% year-on-year to ₹2,055 crore due to high input costs and increase in staff costs.

Meanwhile, the company bagged orders worth ₹50,359 crore during the December quarter, which was lower than the same period last year. But its total order book stood at ₹3.4 lakh crore, which is about 2.5 times its FY21 revenue.

Saregama plans big investment

India’s biggest music archive owner is reportedly planning to invest ₹750 crore in its music business. It aims to achieve 25-30% revenue growth in the next few years backed by organic and inorganic routes.

As per reports, it plans to establish a new business segment where artists can launch their music videos and audios on their platforms. This would be on a revenue sharing model basis. The stock rose 5% today.

Economic Survey 2022

According to the Economic Survey 2022, India’s GDP is expected to grow by 8-8.5% in FY23. Here are the key highlights:

• The retail inflation stood at 5.2% between April and December 2021.
• Industrial production grew 17% between April-Nov’21.
• The fiscal deficit for FY22 is at 6.8% of the GDP.
• Foreign institutional investors (FII) turned net sellers with outflows of $0.6 billion (about ₹4,500 crore) between April and December ’21.
• The delay in LIC IPO as well as BPCL, IDBI Bank stake sales dented divestment target of ₹1.7 lakh crore. The government was able to raise only ₹9,330 crore through the divestment route.
  

Good to know

What is a bad bank?

A bad bank is a special type of financial institution that buys bad loans or non-performing assets (NPAs) of lenders at a mutually agreed discounted value. The bad bank will then try to recover the money or look to turn the fortunes of the debtor. The recovered money is then sent to the bank in the form of upfront cash payment and government guaranteed security receipts (if the bad bank defaults in payment). India’s bad bank is estimated to solve ₹2 lakh crore worth of bad loans and help banks by taking away NPA off the books.

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