New Delhi: A day before the Central Public Sector Enterprises exchange-traded fund (CPSE-ETF)’s follow-on sale begins, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has said it would invest at least Rs2,800 crore or over 62% of the original issue size of the further fund offer. This is the first time EPFO is participating in the government’s divestment plans.

“The finance ministry wanted us to invest Rs3,000 crore but we have agreed to invest Rs2,800 crore as of now,” central provident fund commissioner V.P. Joy said.

Infosys delivered steady Q3FY17 performance. We detail our thoughts on three metrics that have raised concerns— decline in revenue from top-10 accounts—appears far worse than underlying trend, realisation dip; we attribute it to seasonal factors, and margin defence through lower variable comp; not sustainable.

We roll over to FY2019E and revise TP to R1,140 (15X FY2019E EPS) from R1,175 as we build in visa concerns through cuts in multiples from 16.5X. We like the strategy and execution and find valuations attractive.

India’s stock markets became mildly positive in the early morning trade today, after opening almost flat on mixed cues from other emerging markets. Asian markets were trading mixed as investors were cautious ahead of UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s communication, where she may lay out plans to exit from European Union. Nikkei was down nearly 0.5%, while the Korean market was trading up over 0.5%.

Reliance Industries, which announced yesterday its fiscal third quarter net profit rose 4.2% on-year to Rs 7,506 crore, fell sharply and was trading down 1.5% at Rs 1,060.85 on BSE.

The second largest credit card player SBI Card said, after demonetization, the total spends on its cards have increased by 25-30%, despite fall in certain segments like fuel, jewellery and other discretionary spending.

"Total spending on our cards increased post-demonetization by 25-30%. But in some categories like fuel, jewellery and discretionary spending came down," SBI Card chief executive Vijay Jasuja told reporters here.

Reliance Industries (RIL) was down 2.5% at Rs 1,050 on the BSE in intra-day trade after the company reported 10% year on year (YoY) growth in its standalone net profit at Rs 8,022 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2016 (Q3FY17) on account of a higher than expected margins in the refining and petrochemical businesses and a higher other income. The company had reported profit of Rs 7,296 crore in the same quarter last fiscal year.

Income from operations during the quarter under review increased 8.9% at Rs 66,606 crore on YoY basis, while other income rose 32.6% or by Rs 744 crore to Rs 3,025 crore over the previous year quarter.

The stock market continued to log gains. Even though earnings have not been great, better-than-expected macro numbers and hopes of Budget sops are keeping the bulls in business. Nobody was expecting strong Q3 numbers, given demonetisation and poor bank credit, but the low expectations mean that, for example, a positive Index of Industrial Production for November is being seen as a positive.

The Nifty has moved steadily up since it broke out past the 200-Day Moving Average (now around 8,300). Logging values above 8,400 leaves the bullish trend intact and, if we go by pre-Budget trading history, it could run up till the Budget. As of now, the rising commodity cycle is being seen as a positive, boosting the returns; it could turn worrisome if crude moves above $60 a barrel for the Indian basket.

The Security and Intelligence Services has received market regulator Sebi’s go ahead to raise an estimated Rs 500 crore through an initial public offering (IPO).

The firm provides security solutions and business support services to a wide range of customers across India and Australia.

Global tech giant Microsoft has acquired a Canada-based startup Maluuba with an aim to add to the wonderful things that the company has been doing in the area of artificial intelligence and deep machine learning. Maluuba is a company based in Montreal and in known for their research work in deep learning and reinforcement learning. This move by the company will increasingly important for consumers and developers alike. Microsoft in its blog wrote: “We’ve recently set new milestones for speech and image recognition using deep learning techniques, and with this acquisition we are, as Wayne Gretzky would say, skating to where the puck will be next — machine reading and writing.”

In signs of rising income inequality, India's richest 1% now hold a huge 58% of the country's total wealth -- higher than the global figure of about 50%, a new study showed on Monday. The study, released by rights group Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos attended by rich and powerful from across the world, showed that just 57 billionaires in India now have same wealth ($216 billion) as that of the bottom 70% population of the country.

Reliance Industries is planning to invest a sum of Rs. 30,000 crore into Reliance Jio Infocomm to further its development and improve its signal strength.

The company in its board meeting held earlier on Friday decided to invest another Rs. 30,000 crore into its telecom unit and sell 600 crore preference shares to raise the amount. These preference shares will be sold through a rights issue and will be nine percent non-cumulative optionally convertible (OCPS) available at Rs. 50 each including a premium of Rs. 40.

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