HCL Technologies reported better-than-expected earnings for Q3FY23

Opening Bell:

SGX Nifty is up by 39.0 points in the early morning trade, indicating a positive opening for Indian stock market.

Asia-Pacific shares were mixed, after the US consumer price index showed inflation cooled in December, raising investors’ hopes that the Federal Reserve can return to slower interest rate hikes. The Japanese Nikkei is down by 1.15 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is up by 0.24 percent and South Korea’s Kospi is up by 0.87 percent in early morning deals.

A gauge of global stocks climbed on Thursday while longer-dated US Treasury yields and the dollar fell after a reading of consumer prices fed expectations the Federal Reserve may have the leeway to scale back the size of future interest rate hikes. The S&P 500 gained 0.34 percent; and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.64 percent respectively.

Stocks News:

?Infosys reported a 13.4 percent rise in its consolidated net profit for the quarter ended December 2022 at Rs 6,586 crore. The country’s second-largest IT firm had reported a net profit of Rs 5,809 crore in the same quarter last year. Its consolidated revenue from operations increased 20.2 percent to Rs 38,318 crore against Rs 31,867 crore in the corresponding quarter last year, Infosys said in an exchange filing.

?HCL Technologies reported better-than-expected earnings for Q3FY23. It clocked a 17.4% QoQ growth in Q3FY23 profit at Rs 4,096 crore and revenue increased by 8.2% to Rs 26,700 crore. Revenue in dollar terms grew 5.3% sequentially to $3,244 million with constant currency revenue growth at 5% for the quarter. Total contract value was down 1.6% sequentially to $2,347 million, while the IT attrition rate dropped to 21.7% from 23.80% during the same period.

?L&T Technology Services has agreed to acquire the smart world & communication (SWC) Business of L&T. This will enable company to combine synergies and take offerings in next-gen communications, sustainable spaces and cybersecurity to the global market.

?Private equity player Apax Partners’ arm Dynasty Acquisition is likely to sell its entire stake – (up to 1.73 crore shares or a 4.63 percent stake) in Shriram Finance via a block deal on January 13. As per the report, Apax will offer up to a 6 percent discount on deal. The deal size is Rs 2,250 crore including the green shoe option.

?Foreign institutional investors (FII) have net sold shares worth Rs 1,662.63 crore, continuing selling for 15th session in a row, but domestic institutional investors (DII) have managed to offset the FII outflow by net buying shares worth Rs 2,127.65 crore on January 12, as per provisional data available on the NSE.

Domestic and International Events

• A key gauge of US inflation posted a moderate increase in December, adding to evidence that some price pressures are easing and offering the Federal Reserve room to slow the pace of interest-rate hikes next month.
• Excluding food and energy, the consumer price index rose 0.3 percent last month and was up 5.7 percent from a year earlier, according to a US Labor Department report on Thursday. Economists see the gauge — known as the core CPI — as a better indicator of underlying inflation than the headline measure.
• India’s headline retail inflation rate fell for the third month in a row in December, coming in at 5.72 percent – 18 basis points below the consensus estimate of 5.9 percent.
• India’s industrial growth, as per the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), accelerated to 7.1 percent in November, data released on January 12 by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation showed.

Key Equity Indices