Besides re-rating by Morgan Stanley, Reliance Industries has raised the prices of polymer, polyester and intermediaries effective from June 1. In fact, the company has effected price revisions of its products on four occasions in the last three months. The gains from the price rise will add to the bottomline in this quarter. ``Although no concrete figures have come so far, the market is expecting a 40 per cent rise in net from Q1 of the previous fiscal,'' said a fund manager.

The company had logged a net profit of Rs 441 crore for the first quarter of fiscal 1999.With a 40 per cent rise in net, the profit should be in the region of around Rs 620 crore. The company will also benefit from the increase in capacity addition with its 2 lakh tonne per annum polypropylene plant at Jamnagar going on-stream in April this year. The market also expects the company to get the insurance claim of Rs 161 crore after its machinery was damaged by a cyclone in Gujarat last year. This will also buoy the bottomline.

Room for rumour

Indian Hotel is once again attracting institutional investors on the back of rumours that the hotel's occupancy rates have jumped considerably. Although this could not be confirmed, market was agog with another round of rumours that two of the leading domestic mutual funds are taking a fresh look at the hotel industry stocks. Interestingly, a leading institutional broker has been reporting huge cross deals at the counter for the past two consecutive trading sessions.

On Thursday, the counter registered a cross deal of one lakh shares at Rs 334.25,which reaffirmed market rumours that institutions are interested in the stock.

Institutional deals

Institutional favourite counters like ITW Signode, Punjab Tractors and Hero Honda registered huge trades at a premium to the market price.

FII business

Even as FIIs have been reportedly net sellers on the bourses for the past three consecutive sessions, market was agog with rumours that Jardine Broking had picked up over 40,000 shares of Zee Telefilms during the past two sessions. Similarly, DSP Merrill Lynch was also rumoured to have picked up huge chunks of Reliance at the lower levels. However, figures failed to reflect the FII interest.

Meanwhile, market was also agog with rumours that Jardine Broking has received a mandate to buy select index heavy weights with a corpus of $ 3 million. However, it could not be confirmed. According to brokers, the actual inflow would reflect in the FII transaction figures only during the next few trading sessions, as the deals would get reportedeventually.