SENSEX goes above 80,800 level, NIFTY50 hovers at 24,700 mark; these three stocks hit 52-week highs on Tuesday

On Tuesday, over 113 stocks advanced to 52-week highs. The benchmark indices, NIFTY50, traded at the 24,687 level, up 0.47%, and Sensex was at the 80,800 level, up 0.47%. Nifty Bank was at the 50,768 level, up 0.79%. The fear gauge, India VIX, fell to 14.01 levels.

The broader market indices traded in the green, with the Nifty Midcap 100 index up 0.50% and the Nifty Smallcap 100 index with 0.38% gains. The sectoral indices traded green, except for Nifty Consumer Durable, Media, and FMCG, while Banks and Financial Services were top gainers.

Top three stocks that hit a fresh 52-week high on Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Tata Consultancy Sevices (TCS) Ltd - India’s largest IT service provider by market cap, the scrip clinched a 52-week high at ₹4563.15 after surging over 1.63% on Tuesday. This took the company's current market cap closer to the milestone of ₹16.5 lakh crore. Till around 9.50 a.m., the stock witnessed a trade volume of 5.16 lakh shares with a trade value worth ₹234.29 crore.

IT giant’s stock in the last 5 sessions has surged over 8%, in Q1FY25, the company posted an 8.72% YoY rise in net profit at ₹12,040 crore compared with ₹11,074 crore in the same quarter last year. The revenue was up 2.24% YoY at ₹62,613 crore from ₹61,237 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.

Largely the quarterly results of the IT stocks were subdued, however, the TCS results were better than expected. With the probability of interest rate cuts in the U.S. in the near term being high, the IT stocks are depicting a positive trend.

Further in a recent investor’s presentation company presented its framework for legacy modernisation based on Artificial Intelligence, which has the potential to make legacy modernisation possible with much greater accuracy and at a lower cost. In a recent exchange filing company has informed that company leveraged its its AI-powered, unified composable platform “TCS OmniStore” to transform Croma’s commerce operations to a 100% cloud model, a first of this scale in Indian retail. This transformation increased sales for Croma and reduced checkout time for its customers.

Praj Industries Ltd - The ethanol and sugar-producing company’s stock price surged around 8% on Tuesday, hitting a fresh 52-week high at ₹812.95. The volume trade soared to 58.43 lakh shares with trade value ₹464.27 crore on NSE till 9.50 a.m., moving the total market cap to ₹14,666 crore.

In Q1FY25, Income from operations stood at ₹699 crore down 5% YoY, Net profit was at ₹84 crore up 42% YoY. Order intake during the quarter is ₹888 crore, the EBITDA margin improved from 10.25% in the same quarter last year to 13.16% in Q1FY25.

Continued policy support from the government regarding ethanol policy and anticipated minimum support price to the sugar industry is expected to be positive for the stock. In the last 6 months, the stock has rallied over 53%.

The domestic ethanol demand is expected to be driven by the auto industry’s evolving technologies such as Flex-Fuel Engine, SAF: 1% SAF blending requirement is equivalent to the additional demand of 28 crore litres of ethanol and Ethanol Blending in diesel.

Imagicaaworld Entertainment - Malpani Group-backed amusement park’s stock price traded to a 52-week high at ₹103.25 and soared to 1.9% in Tuesday's morning session. The stock has witnessed a positive move with the stock price up over 30% in the last one month, in anticipation of strong quarterly earnings.

In recently announced Q1FY25 earnings, the company reported a 76% YoY rise in revenue to ₹184 crore. Furthermore, net profit surged 179% YoY to ₹69 crore, and the EBITDA margin improved to 60% from 54.4% in the same quarter last year. The footfall rose to 12.2 lakh with 119% growth YoY.

On the operating front in Q1, the company did commercial integration and consolidation of two water parks, one devotional theme park, and one amusement park owned by Giriraj Enterprises, the flagship company of Malpani Group. With this combined strength, Imagicaa now operates across five locations, featuring eight parks in total. This merger has resulted in 12 lakh visitors across the locations in Q1.

India’s changing economic landscape, marked by infrastructural development and rising discretionary spending, is a strong driver of growth for the amusement park in the coming period.