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Friday, May 16, 2014

India’s Stock Market Rises in Volatile Election-Day Trade

Indian stocks rose to record highs in a volatile trading session after vote counts showed the main opposition alliance set for the biggest election win in 30 years. The rupee strengthened, while the India VIX tumbled.
The S&P BSE Sensex (SENSEX) increased 0.9 percent to 24,121.74, after swinging between a gain of 6.1 percent and a loss of 0.1 percent. The rupee rose 0.9 percent against the dollar. The India VIX sank 34 percent as the stock market moved in a narrower trading range than the last election in 2009, when the Sensex surged 17 percent. The Bank of New York Mellon India ADR Index gained 3.4 percent after the close of trading in Mumbai.
The value of Indian equities has climbed by more than $330 billion since Sept. 13, when the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party named Narendra Modi as its candidate for prime minister. While analysts have speculated Modi will do more than the ruling Congress Party to revive economic growth, some investors sold shares today to lock-in gains, said Alex Mathews, the head of research at Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services Ltd. Tom DeMark, the creator of indicators to show market turning points, said on May 13 that stocks may have a “final impulse to the upside,” followed by a retreat of about 11 percent.
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“The market has largely discounted quite a lot of the positive news,” Sam Mahtani, a director of emerging markets at F&C Asset Management Plc, which oversees about $150 billion, said in a telephone interview from London. “There has to be little bit of consolidation and profit taking.”

Sector Rotation

Lenders including ICICI Bank Ltd. (ICICIBC) were among today’s biggest gainers as investors speculated faster economic growth will lead to higher credit quality, while power companies surged on bets that improved infrastructure will boost electricity use. Adani Enterprises Ltd. (ADE), one of the biggest companies in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, climbed 5.8 percent to the highest level since September 2011.
Technology, health-care and consumer staples companies, favored industries as India’s economy slowed to near the weakest pace in a decade, retreated today as investors shifted money into stocks that are more geared to recovery. Infosys Ltd. (INFO), an exporter of software services, and ITC Ltd. (ITC), a producer of cigarettes, were the biggest drags on the Sensex.
Trading in CNX Nifty index shares surged to levels 165 percent higher than the 30-day average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gauge’s intraday swing was the biggest since an eight-second crash in October 2012, which was spurred by mishandled trades and briefly erased more than $50 billion of value.

Relative Value

Global funds bought a net 36.3 billion rupees of Indian stocks today, the highest single-day inflow since March 21, according to provisional data from the exchanges.
The Sensex has climbed about 14 percent this year and trades at 15 times projected 12-month earnings, the most expensive level since 2011. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is valued at 11 times.
The BJP and its allies lead in 334 of 543 seats up for grabs, more than the 272 needed for a majority, according to NDTV. Proponents see Modi, who has overseen annual economic growth of 10 percent as the head of Gujarat state since 2001, as a leader who can speed up infrastructure projects, while opponents blame him for 2002 riots that killed about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Modi rejects accusations of any wrongdoing.

Confidence Boost

Public works projects helped Gujarat outpace the national economic growth rate in 11 of the past 12 financial years for which data is available. The BJP has pledged to construct 100 new cities, build high-speed railway lines and roll out a national fiber-optic network.
“If the government can really push itself, then confidence will increase further,” Rakesh Arora, the head of research at Macquarie Capital Securities India Pvt. and the most accurate forecaster for the Sensex in 2013, said by phone. He raised his Nifty target for the year to March 2015 to 8,400 from 7,200. The gauge rose 1.1 percent to a record 7,203 today.
Weak growth and Asia’s second-fastest inflation have eroded purchasing power in a nation where more than 800 million people live on less than $2 per day.
Projects worth $230 billion are awaiting clearance as lawmaking stalled in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition, data from the Cabinet Committee on Investment show. Subsidy bills rose fivefold in the past decade to 2.6 trillion rupees ($44 billion) a year, a period in which the Indian economy only doubled in size.

‘Very Excited’

“This is comparable to the election of Ronald Reagan in the U.S. or Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. in terms of the pro-business stance we expect the Modi government will take,” Sam Gupta, the chief investment officer of Grand Trunk Capital, a Palo Alto, California-based investment firm that invests in India, wrote in an e-mail. “We are very excited about the opportunities this presents.”
Nine rounds of voting started on April 7 to pick representatives in the world’s largest democracy. Turnout averaged a record 66.4 percent, the Election Commission of India said, compared with 58 percent in 2009 and the previous high of 64 percent in 1984. A Congress party spokeswoman conceded defeat today, before the final tally was released.
“Modi is very popular,” Adrian Lim, a Singapore-based money manager at Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, which oversees $322 billion worldwide, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV India today. “So many people within the country are tired of what has happened over the last two to three years, where administration and governance has taken a back seat.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Rajhkumar K Shaaw in Mumbai at rshaaw@bloomberg.net; Santanu Chakraborty in Mumbai at schakrabor11@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Patterson at mpatterson10@bloomberg.net Richard Richtmyer

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Reliance, Vodafone Spats Await Next Government of India

India’s next government faces an early test of its ability to boost economic confidence after Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) sought arbitration to resolve high-profile disputes.
Reliance, operator of the nation’s biggest gas field, issued an arbitration notice on May 9 over a delayed gas-price increase it says imperils almost $4 billion of investment this year. Reliance acted two days after Vodafone said it had chosen international arbitration for a protracted $2.4 billion tax row.
India’s benchmark S&P BSE Sensex (SENSEX) equity index has surged to a record as investors bet the Narendra Modi-led opposition Bharatiya Janata Party will take power after the general election ending May 16 and adopt policies to ease spats. The risk is that the complexity of the disagreements will prevent rapid resolutions, eventually denting the rise in optimism.
“Overseas investors are looking for a stable government and investor-friendly policies,” said H.P. Ranina, a Mumbai-based lawyer at India’s Supreme Court who’s served on the boards of companies and the Reserve Bank of India. “It’s for the government to decide whether to go for arbitrations or to develop policies in a manner that arbitrations don’t arise.”
Reliance, controlled by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, is stepping up pressure for implementation of a decision by the Cabinet last year that about doubles rates for locally produced gas. Anti-graft politician Arvind Kejriwal has attacked the plan as unfair for consumers facing inflation of more than 8 percent.

Shares Surge

Reliance’s shares rose as much as 5.2 percent to 1,049 rupees, the highest intraday price since April 8, 2011, and traded at 1,043.45 rupees as of 9:37 a.m. in Mumbai. The stock has gained 16 percent this year, compared with a 10 percent increase in the S&P BSE Sensex.
Newbury, England-based Vodafone’s quarrel dates back to its 2007 purchase of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. (13)’s Indian assets.
Vodafone has said it didn’t owe taxes because the acquisition of Hong Kong-based Hutchison’s business was between two international companies, with the target asset registered in the Cayman Islands. India responded in 2012 with a law enabling it to retroactively tax cross-border deals.

New Government

“Any new government will have to resolve pending issues and ensure economic policies are put back on track,” said Deven Choksey, managing director of Mumbai-based brokerage K.R. Choksey Shares & Securities Pvt.
The rupee has strengthened 3.2 percent against the dollar, as investors speculate that a Modi-led administration will boost economic growth from close to a decade low and curb corruption scandals.
Opinion polls through mid-April, the latest available, signaled the BJP would emerge as the largest party in the lower house of parliament while falling short of a majority. Exit polls are due later today and ballots are counted May 16.
A Modi-led government would provide stable policies, Arun Jaitley, a BJP leader, said in an interview last month.
Mumbai-based Reliance, BP Plc (BP/) and Niko Resources Ltd. (NKO) said in their notice that clarity in pricing is needed for $8 billion to $10 billion of investment over the next few years that aims to “significantly increase production” from the KG-D6 deposit in the Bay of Bengal. Output there has slumped in recent years.
Gas is used mainly for power and fertilizer production in energy-deficient India, and pricing is a sensitive topic, given more than 800 million of its people live on less than $2 a day.

Gas Price

Output from the KG-D6 block is currently sold at $4.2 per million British thermal units. The Election Commission in March told the oil ministry to defer an increase until the vote ends.
Reliance’s earnings per share would rise by 1.5 percent in the year that began April 1 for every $1 increase in gas prices at a production rate of 15 million cubic meters a day, Mumbai-based IIFL Holdings Ltd. estimates.
Arbitration would take a few months to get initiated and probably last about a year, according to the lawyer Ranina.
The next government faces the task of spurring more investment into Indian industries and speeding up stalled projects. The $1.8 trillion economy expanded 4.9 percent in the fiscal year ended March, below the past decade’s average of 7.6 percent.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anoop Agrawal in Mumbai at aagrawal8@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jason Rogers at jrogers73@bloomberg.net Indranil Ghosh, Sunil Jagtiani