ADVERTISEMENT

Sensex ends above 16,000 on stellar SBI results

Policymakers insist they want Greece to remain in the euro zone but European Union trade commissioner Karel De Gucht said the European Commission and the European Central Bank were working on scenarios in case it has to leave.

Former Olympus president and chief executive Michael Woodford.
Former Olympus president and chief executive Michael Woodford.

The BSE Sensex managed to end in the green after a choppy day of trade that saw the benchmark falling over 250 points in early trade. The broader Nifty index, which had slipped below the 4,800 mark briefly, managed to end near the 4,900 mark.

A stellar set of numbers from State Bank of India, the country's top lender, surprised investors, who had given up on public sector banks over asset quality concerns. The lender not only beat net profit estimates, which stood at Rs 4,050 crore, but also reported a fall in non-performing assets and provisioning for bad loans in the March quarter.

Shares in SBI, which have been under pressure recently, closed 5.1% higher at Rs 1,942 on the BSE. The Sensex gained 82 points, or 0.51%, at 16,152.75. The Nifty advanced 21 points at 4,891.45.

SBI's outperformance drove other banking stocks higher. Private lenders ICICI Bank (2.25%) and Kotak Mahindra (1.6%) were noticeable gainers.

Auto stocks (-1.9%) failed to recover, though they closed off the day's low. Tata Motors (-4.15%) failed to recover from the modest growth in sales of luxury JLR models in April. Shares of Maruti Suzuki (-3.2%), India's biggest car maker, also ended at the bottom of the Nifty index. Two-wheeler major Bajaj Auto (-3.2%) ended lower for a second straight day. It had reported its March quarter earnings yesterday.
On the Nifty, 27 of the 50 stocks ended in the green. In contrast, only 226 of the 500 stocks advanced on the broader BSE 500 index.

Despite the bounce back, analysts remained negative in their outlook.

"The bounce could again be short lived and the Nifty should not go past 4,925-4,950," independent analyst Sarvendra Srivastava said.

Earlier, the Sensex had slipped way below the 16,000 mark tracking negative global cues. Global stocks came under selling pressure after ratings agency Moody's downgraded 16 Spanish banks citing a weak economy and the government's reduced ability to support troubled lenders. Data from the US indicated that manufacturing contracted in the mid-Atlantic region for the first time in eight months.

Asian markets closed with deep cuts, with markets in South Korea (-3.40%) and Japan (-3%) leading the losses.

European stocks traded mixed. Markets in Spain and France were in green, while the FTSE index in Britain traded with over 0.5% cut at 04.05 pm.

(With inputs from agencies)