The Hindu Business Line : Benchmarks rebound thanks to cement, HFC stocks

BRUSHING off the weakness seen over the previous two trading days, the benchmark indices staged a strong rebound on Thursday. The Sensex moved up by 89.91 points to finish the day at 6619.97 points; the Nifty jumped by 27.20 points to settle at 2079.45 points.

The secular nature of Thursday's rally can be gauged from how the constituents of the Sensex and the Nifty moved; just one Sensex stock and two Nifty stocks ended the day in the negative territory. There was a positive buzz surrounding stocks of cement and housing finance sectors.

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Advancing stocks outnumbered declining stocks by a factor of four to one. Among the Nifty 50, only Sun Pharma (markets appear unimpressed with the proposed consolidation with subsidiaries) and Zee Telefilms were in the red.

In post-market hours, State Bank of India announced the acquisition of 51 per cent stake and management control in Indian Ocean International Bank of Mauritius. SBI would be a stock to watch in early trading on Friday.

Even as HDFC (and its sister outfit HDFC Bank) posted modest gains, smaller players such as SBI Home Finance, Gruh Finance and GIC Housing Finance were in the limelight with notable gains.

Cement majors such as Gujarat Ambuja Cement, Grasim and ACC consolidated on recent gains with a modest upside. UltraTech Cement, Shree Cement and Jaiprakash Associates were the prominent gainers among the larger players. In line with trends over the past couple of months, stocks of potential participants in the consolidation process - Prism Cements, India Cements, Gujarat Sidhee Cement, Mysore Cement and Mangalam Cement - were heavily traded.

Mangalam Cement sported a gain of about 20 per cent while the rest ended the day with moderate gains.

Yet another sector where a bullish undertone prevailed was engineering. Stocks of MNC players - ABB and Siemens, which have reported buoyant revenue and earnings growth - were marked up as they extended a protracted bullish phase. A host of other stocks such as Cummins, Crompton Greaves, Thermax, Emco, MM Forgings and LMW recorded sizeable gains.

Stocks from the steel sector, too, were firm on the back of reports that China's steel demand is likely to show a robust growth in 2005, too, on the back of a 23 per cent rise last year.

Tata Steel, SAIL, Ispat Industries, Essar Steel and Jindal Vijayanagar ended Thursday's trading with modest gains on hefty volumes. Sesa Goa - the iron ore exporter - had yet another day of significant gains and now trades within a touching distance of the Rs 1,500 mark.

Given the broad trend of firmness in the steel sector, it was not a surprise that the stock of Impex Ferro listed with gains in excess of 100 per cent. The stock, which was offered at Rs 10 in the IPO, closed the day at Rs 23.45. On the NSE and BSE, about 30 million shares - several times the capital base - were traded.

Sugar stocks had a breather and shed a small part of the gains accumulated in recent weeks. A few such as Oudh Sugar and Upper Ganges Sugar figured among the list of top losers. Stocks such as Thiru Arooran, Bannari Amman and Dhampur Sugar were traded at lower levels. The only sugar-sector stock to buck the trend was Balrampur Chini, which ended in the positive territory on the back of news that its board would consider a stock split and also place equity with select investors.

A mixed trend was evident in the banking sector stocks. In the hospitality space, with the notable exception of Asian Hotels, stocks of most of the other players ruled firm with Thomas Cook and Indian Hotels at the forefront.

Other prominent gainers were Pantaloon Retail, Sundaram Clayton, IPCL, Tourism Finance, Balmer Lawrie, Alps Industries, Moser Baer, Minda Industries, Gujarat NRE Coke and Ashapura Minechem.

Notable losers were Rathi Udyog, Excel Crop Care, Jay Bharat Maruti, Geodesic Information, Nagarjuna Construction, Honeywell Automation, Kalyani Brakes, CESC, Apollo Hospitals and Praj Industries.

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