Quick view: Ssangyong March sales up 23% at 13,232 units

Ssangyong March sales up 23% at 13,232 units

Mahindra-owned Ssangyong Motor on Wednesday said it registered a 23% rise in sales to 13,232 vehicles in March 2014 on a year-on-year basis. Of the total sales, 5,850 vehicles were sold in Korean market while 7,382 vehicles were for exports, including CKD kits. Ssangyong’s domestic sales rose 18.8% compared to the same month last year and cumulative sales grew 26.4% on the back of higher demand for Korando Sports and the Rexton W. The company?s exports rose 26.5% year-on-year and 10.6% on an accumulated basis driven by a sales growth of the New Korando C in main markets including China and Europe, exceeding 7,000 vehicles in four months since last November.

Bajaj March bike sales up 1%, down 9% for fiscal

Bajaj Auto reported a marginal 1% growth in motorcycle sales during March 2014 at 270,591 units. Total sales in March grew 1% to 304,330 units. Commercial vehicle sales were down 1% at 33,739 units in March. Exports grew 17% to 118,183 units. However, Bajaj ended FY14 with a drop in motorcycle sales as well as total sales. For the year, motorcycle sales were down 9% at 34.22 lakh units while CV sales were down 7% at 4.47 lakh units. Total sales for the year were down 9% at 38.70 lakh units. Exports remained positive with a 2% increase during the year to 15.83 lakh units.

SpiceJet surges 19% even as DGCA stops R1 offer

Shares of SpiceJet on Wednesday rose by over 19% even as the aviation regulator asked the no-frills carrier to immediately stop its offer of R1 fares across its domestic network. The stock surged 19.19% to settle at R17.27 on the BSE, after rallying to R17.38, its upper circuit limit, during the day. SpiceJet’s market value climbed R149 crore to R924 crore. About 113 lakh shares of the company changed hands on the BSE. SpiceJet, which lowered fares by up to 75% in the previous quarter, on Tuesday offered limited period bookings for as low as R1 across its domestic network.

Bharti may benefit most from data boom: CLSA

Bharti Airtel?s mobile data users are expected to increase over 2.4 times to 129 million in the next three years, says a report. At the end of December 2013, the company had 54 million data customers, global brokerage firm CLSA said in a report on Bharti Airtel. India?s broadband penetration is only 2% while that of mobiles is a vast 72% (893 million subscribers) and rising, it said. “Bharti…is taking the lead in data ramp-up and…we expect its mobile-data subscribers to jump 2.4x to 129 million by FY17,” it added.

PE deals almost double to $2.3 billion in Q1cy14

Private equity firms invested about $2.273 billion in 89 deals in the quarter ended March 2014. This was almost twice the investments made in the same period last year ($1.179 billion across 103 transactions), and marginally higher than that invested during the immediate previous quarter ($2.221 billion across 86 transactions). These are the findings of Venture Intelligence, a Chennai-based research service focusing on private company financials, transactions and valuations in India. The figures do not include PE investments in the real estate sector.

Crisil sees mild recovery in cos? credit profiles

Credit rating agency Crisil has warned that though credit quality pressure on corporates has bottomed out, improvement will be gradual due to the fragile recovery even as it feels profitability will be a tad better this fiscal. The rating agency also said that it expected GDP growth of 6% this fiscal, which is 50 basis points above the consensus estimate and also that of the RBI and Asian Development Bank, but warned that if monsoons fail due to an

El Nino impact on rainfalls, economic expansion could slip to 5.2%.

Airtel renews contract with IBM for five years

Telecom major Airtel on Wednesday renewed its IT outsourcing contract with global technology giant IBM to manage its infrastructure and application services in India for five years, but the value of the deal was not disclosed. The new deal is an extension of a ten-year contract signed first in 2004, which came to an end in March, 2014, but the new agreement is of a shorter duration. It is understood that Airtel is in talks with other competing vendors of IBM, largely Indian, to provide remaining portions of the contract.

Bharti SoftBank invests $14 m in messaging app

Bharti SoftBank has invested an additional $14 million (R84 crore) in its mobile instant messaging application ‘hike’, which crossed 15 million users in February. hike, a free cross-platform messaging application, was launched in December 2012 and is run by Kavin Bharti Mittal, son of Bharti Group chairman Sunil Mittal. A JV between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corporation, BSB in April last year had invested $7 million in hike. “Our goal with the new round of funding is to double down on growth, further expand our team; hiring the best talent so we can topple the year we just had,” Kavin said in a statement.