SENSEX up over 350 points; Blue Dart, Adani Green, Varun Beverages among buzzing stocks

The Indian equity benchmarks extended gains in noon deals on Wednesday, October 29, led by gains in index heavyweights like Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies and State Bank of India. The SENSEX rose as much as 374 points and NIFTY50 index touched an intraday high of 26,065.

As of 12:12 pm, the SENSEX was up 367 points at 84,995 and NIFTY50 index advanced 124 points to 26,060.

Blue Dart Express post market hours on Tuesday reported consolidated net profit of ₹81 crore in the second quarter of current financial year, marking an increase of 29% from ₹63 crore in the same period last year.

The company's revenue from operations advanced 7% to ₹1,549 crore in July-September period from ₹1,448 crore in the year-ago period.

Blue Dart reported strong operational performance in September quarter as its EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) also known as operating profit advanced 16% to ₹252 crore from ₹218 crore and its EBITDA margin expanded by 120 basis points to 16.3% from 15.07%.

The proposals are aimed at bringing regulatory clarity, reducing redundancies, and promoting ease of compliance, SEBI said in its consultation paper.

Under the proposed framework, SEBI plans to eliminate the additional 5 basis points (bps) that asset management companies (AMCs) were previously allowed to charge across mutual fund schemes.

This additional expense, introduced to offset the impact of crediting exit loads back to schemes, was first set at 20 bps in 2012 and later reduced to 5 bps in 2018. The additional expense of 5 bps that mutual fund schemes were allowed to charge was transitory in nature, SEBI noted.

The company's gross margins improved by 119 bps at 56.7% due to increased mix of water in international markets. Also, in the international markets, there is a shifting of expenses from purchase of raw materials to employee cost, power & fuel and other manufacturing overheads because of increased in-house backward integration initiatives.

Its net profit rose by y 18.5% to ₹745 crore from ₹629 crore.

The Adani group firm’s total income dropped 4.3% year-on-year (YoY) to ₹3,249 crore in Q2 FY26 in contrast to ₹3,996 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year.

Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) came in at ₹2,844 crore for the quarter under review as against ₹2,608 crore in Q2 FY25, marking a rise of 9%. Margin expanded to 87.5% in the reporting quarter as compared to 76.8% YoY.

The country's sugar mills diverted only 3.4 million tonnes of sugar for ethanol manufacturing in 2024-25, well below the projected 4.5 million tonnes, Union Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra told PTI in an interview.

This has resulted in high opening stocks for the current 2025-26 marketing year that runs from October to September, the official said.

Trading volume in DCM Shriram shares surged by 32 times to 26.88 lakh shares compared with an average trading volume of 83,149 shares.

On the BSE, 1.52 lakh shares changed hands on the BSE compared with an average of 4,011 shares traded daily in the past two weeks.