Anticipated verdict is out, finally. In the race between the two natural resources giant, state-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) on Wednesday overtook private major Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and positioned itself as the largest listed entity in terms of market capitalisation.
At close, the miner romped home with a market capitalisation of Rs 2,51,296 crore on the BSE, Rs 4,167 crore higher than the gas and petrochemicals player.
Until recently CIL was neck-and-neck with ONGC, another government controlled company in the natural resources space, for the second spot.
It displaced ONGC for the first time from second position in May 2011.
CIL gained 64 per cent or added around Rs 96,000 crore to its market capitalisation since its public issue in November 2010. Its issue price was Rs 245. Incidentally during the same time, RIL lost 29 per cent value.
However, CIL's performance could not be replicated by other PSU stocks.
BSE PSU index, which includes CIL, lost 23 per cent during the period since November 2010 despite Coal India providing 62 per cent returns.
Excluding CIL, BSE PSU index losses would have, obviously, been more.
Barring CIL and Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) all other PSU stocks lost money for investors.
PSU stocks
Coal India reported consolidated net sales of Rs 59,560 crore and net profit of Rs 10,867 crore for the year ended March 2011. RIL on the other hand reported Rs 2,76,371 crore of revenues and Rs 19,271 crore net profit.
CIL finished 2.64 per cent up at Rs 397.85 on the BSE, RIL, on the other hand, declined 0.9 per cent to Rs 752.55.
Energy demand
While CIL's journey to the top was fuelled by energy demand, primarily from the power generators, fall in natural gas production was main reason for RIL's deflation. As a result market price of RIL plumbed 29 per cent lower this year.
On the contrary, CIL rose by 26 per cent, handsomely outperforming the benchmark index, which declined by 18 per cent.
Kolkata image
The Kolkata-based company indirectly provided a boost to the image of the city as a financial and business centre.
Apart from CIL, ITC was the only other city-hosted Sensex company.