Business News at 05:30 pm on 20th January 2023

First the share market, Equity indices concluded the week’s last muted trading session in the red. The BSE Sensex closed below 60,630 and the NSE Nifty 50 after moving in the range of 18,016.20 and 18,145.45 settled below 18030. The BSE Sensex fell 236.66 pts or 0.39% to close at 60,621.77 and the Nifty 50 dropped 80.20 pts or 0.44% to 18,027.65. The top losers of the Nifty 50 were Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL), Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, Nestle India and JSW Steel while top gainers were Coal India, HDFC Bank, Power Grid, HDFC and ITC.

Speaking of the market, HUL shares fell more than 3% on Friday to Rs 2,550 on National Stock Exchange on profit-booking after the company’s Q3 results beat street estimates. HUL’s net profit for the quarter ended 31 December 2022 increased to Rs 2,505 crore, up 12% from Rs 2,243 crore reported in the year-ago period. The FMCG behemoth’s revenue from operations came in at Rs 15,228 crore, up 16% against Rs 13,092 crore logged in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal. HUL share price has jumped more than 16% in the last one year, and over 3% so far in 2022, outperforming Nifty 50. In the previous session, shares of HUL closed 1.6% lower at Rs 2,643.05 on National Stock Exchange.

Over to industry. Vedanta Resources Ltd.’s dollar bonds rallied on improved liquidity prospects after Vedanta Ltd. announced plans to sell its international zinc operations to unit Hindustan Zinc Ltd. for $2.98 billion and benefit from a dividend outflow by Anil Agarwal’s cash cow, according to a Bloomsberg report. Prices for all Vedanta Resources’ outstanding bonds rose on Friday. The company’s note due in April 2026 rose 7.8 cents on the dollar to 77.6 cents Friday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the biggest gain since June 2020. Rajasthan, India-based Hindustan Zinc will buy the assets of THL Zinc Ltd. Mauritius in a phased manner from its parent over a period of about 18 months, subject to regulatory approvals, the Indian miner said in an exchange filing Thursday. The operations of THL include Black Mountain Mining Ltd. in South Africa and Skorpion Zinc Ltd. in Namibia, it said.

In some more industry news, Infosys Ltd. is preparing to accelerate its pace of acquisitions, taking advantage of more sensible valuations and a return of IT spending when economies stabilize, Boolmberg reported. Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh said he’s been meeting with clients in Davos and many of them have expressed optimism about the year ahead. He said many would continue to move toward cloud adoption and automation despite persistent uncertainty about the outlook for 2023. Parekh in an interview to Bloomberg News at the World Economic Forum in Davos said, quote, “We are very much looking at what we can do to acquire much more actively. Valuations are in a range that make more sense.” Infosys last week raised its sales forecast for the year to March, remaining upbeat on large clients’ need to automate their systems and cut costs even as it warned of pockets of uncertainty because of a global economic downturn.

Meanwhile, all the conjectures, and rumours around Twitter banning third party clients finally come true. The social media company has updated it developer rules to ban third-party clients nearly a week after services like Tweetbot and Twitterrific were denied access to its API. The new rules say that any third-party client cannot use or access the licensed materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications. “Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules. That may result in some apps not working,” Twitter posted this two days ago acknowledging the outage but it did not give any information on these API rules. The company has now updated its Developer Platform page with updated information on the Developer Agreement. Twitter makes it clear that Twitter Developer Agreement is made between an entity and Twitter and governs former’s access to and use of licensed material.

Lastly, The much-awaited launch of the 2023 Hyundai Grand i10 Nios is done and dusted, with the carmaker launching the hatchback at Rs 5.69 lakh onwards (ex-showroom). As part of the update, the Hyundai Grand i10 Nios gets cosmetic updates, as well as several feature upgrades, most of them being segment firsts. The Hyundai Grand i10 Nios facelift gets an updated front grille, projector headlamps, roof rails, new DRLs, and new tail lamps that are sleeker and connected with a thin strip between them. Though subtle changes, all these have added up to make a substantial difference in the car’s overall design.