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Virendra Verma

Mumbai , Sept. 29

Stock of select PSUs including HPCL and BPCL shot into the limelight in today's trading on expectation of special dividend by these companies.

Stockbrokers said talk of several PSUs especially in the oil and petroleum sector contemplating special dividend was there in the market and it led to rise in the stock prices of PSUs.

Some of the companies whose stock prices increased included HPCL, BPCL, ONGC, Bongaigaon Refinery and Shipping Corporation of India.

On the BSE, the HPCL stock gained 5.37 per cent at Rs 373.70 , BPCL 6.17 per cent at Rs 369, ONGC 6.06 per cent at Rs 609, Bongaigaon Refinery 7.3 per cent at Rs 79.50 and Shipping Corporation gained 6.9 per cent at Rs 110.10.

Brokers said the expectation is that these PSUs to announce special dividend and this would be mainly to help the government to mobilise funds in the absence of disinvestments of several companies.

Other reason for the rise in the stock price of oil companies was the closure of a refinery in Japan and this is expected to benefit most of the refinery companies in Asia. "Oil price are likely to rise in the Asian region due to the closure of the Japanese refinery and the Indian refinery companies are likely to benefit," said an analyst with a domestic broking firm.

In the case of BPCL and HPCL the market is expecting a dividend of around 300-400 per cent, for Bongaigaon Refinery, the market is expecting around 50 per cent dividend. For Shipping Corporation, the dividend expectation is around 90-100 per cent. The board of the company is meeting on October 3 for declaring an interim dividend.

However, in case of ONGC there was a lot of confusion on the dividend expectation; Mr Arun Kejriwal of KRIS Research said "there was a lot of confusion due to reports in select media of 300 per cent dividend payment during the trading hours". He said the agenda of AGM is known in advance and the stock price had also factored the dividend as the stock was quoting ex-dividend.

ONGC had paid an interim dividend of 170 per cent (or Rs 17 per share) and additional dividend of 130 per cent (or Rs 13 per share) announced later and this was approved by the shareholders in today's AGM. Several stocksbrokers did not had any idea of this during the trading hours and this led to the rise in the stock price. The stock also increased due to its inclusion in BSE Sensex list.

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