The Hindu Business Line : Acquisition talk props up Sonata Soft

Sonata Software, a BSE 500 company, spurted on Wednesday with sharp spike in volume as market grapevine talked about an imminent acquisition by the company. The size of the takeover deal was speculated to be worth several hundred million dollars.

Responding to Business Line query on the unconfirmed news, Mr B. Ramaswamy, President and MD of the company, informed over phone from Bangalore that: “This is a rumour and we do not comment on rumours as such”.

The stock finished up10 per cent at Rs 52.50 on the NSE with a traded quantity of 4.56 lakh shares. On the BSE, 2.65 lakh shares changed hands. Interestingly, the stock’s weekly gain now stands at just over 8 per cent, but has lost 7.5 per cent in the last one month. Trading data suggests that Wednesday’ the price and traded quantity in the counter on both the exchanges were sudden phenomena as the respective figures had of late been on the decline. On the BSE, the average daily traded volume of the stock in the past fortnight was only 24,761 shares. According to market sources, the counter witnessed a sustained buying from certain operators in Wednesday’s session.

Analysts, who track the IT consulting and software services company, said the margins improved despite slightly lower sales in the June-end quarter against the quarter to March 31, 2007 (Re 1-share’s earnings up to Rs 0.74 from Rs 0.69). Its Rs 10.52 crore paid-up capital (free reserves Rs 175.75 crore) produced Rs 35.13 crore net in 2006-07, up from Rs 7.78 crore in 2005-06.

Jayanta Mallick

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