Business News at 10:00 am on 16th July, 2024

Let’s begin. Truecaller’s capabilities go much beyond just caller identification and the company does not consider as threat the government’s calling name presentation service for which the telecom operators have started doing trials. Quote Our services can coexist with CNAP unquote Rishit Jhunjhunwala, chief product officer and managing director of Truecaller India, told FE in an interview. Quote Truecaller is now also telling users why somebody is calling, telling them what other people are saying about this caller, and whether this call is a scam or fraud unquote Jhunjhunwala said, adding that the company’s offering has enough value in a consumer’s life beyond just showing KYC-based caller ID to users, on which the government’s CNAP service is based. Truecaller shows spam statistics with a red colour.
Moving to Industry news, India and the European Union made a lot of progress on the key issues surrounding the propsoed free trade agreement between them in the last round of negotiations in late June and the next round is expected to be held in late September, a senior official said. In the latest round, discussions were held on all the 21 chapters or policy areas covered by the FTA with the aim of resolving divergences, joint secretary in the department of commerce Darpan Jain said. The September talks will be the ninth round of negotiations. India and EU are also negotiating a Trade and Investment Agreement, and a pact on Geographical Indications. India and the 27-nation bloc resumed negotiations on the FTA on June 17 2022.
Over to market news, Thematic and sectoral funds have become the flavour of the season, with both fund houses and investors registering an over four-fold increase in monthly inflows over the past six months and drawing more than 55% of the total equity investments in June. Last month, nine new fund offerings raised as much as Rs 12,974 crore. Monthly inflows into thematic and sectoral funds soared to Rs 22,532 crore in June, from Rs 4,805 crore in January. The growing demand for such funds also reflected in the number of NFOs (22) launched during the period. Quote this is an effect of the bull market progressing, wherein investors are now seeking new growth opportunities and decent valuations unquote said Anand Vardarajan, chief business officer, Tata Asset Management.
Next from Express Mobility, Automakers will have to accelerate their adoption of electric-only vehicles over the next three years or risk facing stiff penalties under stricter regulations seeking near 20% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. The third phase of the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency norms will require companies to improve vehicle fuel efficiency as well as reduce release of pollutants. The much more stringent nature of the norms will leave automakers no alternative but to switch to electric. While CAFÉ 2, which is under implementation, allows carmakers to meet the norms by adopting CNG and hybrids, CAFÉ 3 is designed to discourage the sale of non-electric cars. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency invited stakeholders to share comments on CAFÉ 3 and CAFÉ 4 norms.
Latest update on Budget, The Centre is likely to set an ambitious target of Rs 10 trillion for the second phase of the National Monetisation Pipeline to be implemented in the five years ending FY30. “The assets in the second phase will be led by highways, mining, power and petroleum, while metro rail networks in major cities will give the impetus to the asset recycling for the first time,” a senior official said. The first phase of NMP had set an ambitious Rs 6 trillion asset recycling target for four years through FY25, by monetisation of brownfield assets in sectors like roads, mining, power, petroleum and airports. Despite the Railway sector lagging massively, the NMP-1 achievement has been Rs 3.85 trillion.
No from industry news, In a series of optimistic evaluations, multiple brokerage firms have revised their target prices for HCLTech stock after the company maintained its fiscal year revenue guidance at 3–5% year-on-year and the operating margin at 18–19%, despite a challenging first quarter. As a result, the stock rose nearly 5% intraday to a three-month high of Rs 1,636.40 on the NSE. Eventually, the stock erased most of its gains to end 0.5% higher at Rs 1,568. Nuvama Institutional Equities maintained their ‘buy’ rating, elevating the target price from Rs 1,700 to Rs 1,800. Quote HCLTech’s sharp re-rating has been driven by higher growth than peers and rectification of its capital allocation policy fundamentals that shall sustain in FY25 too uquote they stated.
Lastly, let’s have a look on the stocks which are in focus today. These are HUL, Zomato, Jio Financial Services, Unichem Laboratories, HDFC Life. Hindustan Unilever Limited announced that it has signed an agreement for the sale of its Pureit business in India whereas Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato, has joined the billionaire club.