Record closing: Nifty ends at 8322, Sensex soars 519 pts

03:30 Market closing:

The market ended at record closing levels with mighty gains. The Sensex was up 519.50 points or 1.9 percent at 27865.83 and the Nifty ended up 153.00 points or 1.9 percent at 8322.20. About 1770 shares advanced, 1214 shares declined and 128 shares were unchanged.

GAIL, Tata Power, HDFC, L&T and Tata Steel were top gainers in the Sensex. Deagged by Q2 results, Bharti and ITC were major losers.

03:15 pm Market check: 

 The Sensex is up 534.47 points or 1.9 percent at 27880.80 and the Nifty is up 153.55 points or 1.9 percent at 8322.75. About 1768 shares have advanced, 1203 shares declined, and 122 shares are unchanged. 

03:00 pm Results: Multiplex operator PVR today reported a decline of 66.60 per cent in its consolidated net profit to Rs 9.20 crore for the quarter ended September 30. The company had reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 27.55 crore for the July-September quarter of last fiscal.

However, PVR's total consolidated income from operations during the second quarter increased 9.41 per cent to Rs 400.20 crore as against Rs 334.45 crore in the same period a year ago, the company said in a BSE filing.

02:50 pm Market check:  

The market is on fire with the Nifty hitting 8300 and 27803.30. Currently, the Sensex is up 433.13 points or 1.6 percent at 27779.46 and the Nifty is up 124.75 points or 1.5 percent at 8293.95.  About 1764 shares have advanced, 1132 shares declined, and 126 shares are unchanged.

Gail,  HDFC, L&T, Tata Steel and Maruti are top gainers and Bharti, ITC and BHEl were among the laggards.

02:30pm Brokerages reaction on ITC earnings

FMCG major ITC announced its Q2 numbers that came inline with analysts’ expectations. The company’s net profit climbed 8.7 percent year-on-year to Rs 2,425 crore supported by other income and higher revenue.

While analysts say the numbers are on expected lines, Suruchi Jain of Morningstar believes the company should address the cigarette business’ fall in profitability. 

“The fact that they have started spending more on the FMCG front is bad for the company as that is utter bad use of capital. It has taken the company so long to start showing good results,” says Jain.

Jain believes the profits could reflect in the profit and loss accounts if the company stopped spending on FMCG.

Naveen Kulkarni, co-head-research, Phillip Capital says the company’s hotel and agriculture business EBITDA margins are highly uninspiring.

02:15pm HUL in News

More than 450 workers and their families staged demonstrations outside Hindustan Unilever headquarters in Mumbai on Friday. This protest is called by Hindustan Unilever Employees Federation. The workers are from the Amli and Dapada factories.

The workers are protesting on a whole host of issues including low wages. They claim that the wages received by them are not on par with those received by their peers at Nestle and Colgate. Workers further allege that no compensation was paid after an accident at the company's Kodaikanal factory in 2003.

Workers also say that all efforts to unionise are always met with hostile reaction from the management and alleged the management of creating sponsored unions with whom settlements are reached and these terms of settlements are forced upon the workers. The workers demand that this victimization must stop.

HUL management on its part told CNBC-TV18 that it has always encouraged unions and that it always leaves it upto the workers to decide whether to join a particular union. They say the company is following the due process for discussions with the unions and will continue to engage with the workers to resolve the issue. 

02:00pm Market Check 

The spectacular rally continued in afternoon trade with the Sensex rising more than 400 points and the Nifty inching towards the 8300-mark supported by banking & financials, oil & gas, technology and capital goods stocks.

The 30-share BSE Sensex climbed 423.86 points or 1.55 percent to 27770.19 and the 50-share Nifty jumped 123.85 points or 1.52 percent to 8293.05. Advancing shares outnumbered declining ones by a ratio of 1747 to 1110 on the BSE.

Christopher Wood, CLSA says India remains by far the most promising stock market story in Asia and emerging markets, and indeed the world, on a five-year view.

Gail India topped the buying list, rising over 7 percent after stellar performance in bottomline. Profit in September quarter more than doubled to Rs 1,303 crore compared to Rs 621.4 crore in previous quarter.

Large buying was seen in blue chip names like HDFC (up 4 percent), L&T (up 3 percent), SBI (up 2 percent), Infosys (up 2 percent), Reliance Industries (up 1.9 percent) and HDFC Bank (up 1.7 percent) while selling was seen in Bharti Airtel post a weak performance in the Africa business. In earnings today, ITC reported a decent quarter with a 9 percent growth in profits to Rs 2,425 crore in second quarter.

The biggest talking point globally is the 5 percent surge in the Japan's Nikkei after the Bank of Japan, in an unexpected move today, expanded the pace of its quantitative easing to 80 trillion yen against 50 trillion earlier. This sent the Japanese yen slumping to a 6-year low versus the dollar.