24 February 2010

Heard on the Street

Heard on the Street


Hedge fund stocking up on Hawkins

Cookers


Shares of pressure cooker manufacturer Hawkins Cookers are gradually being accumulated by hedge fund ‘Fortunate’, say dealers. This hedge fund and another local mutual fund, are on the lookout for a sizeable stake in the company, they say.

The company’s topline has been growing at a compounded annual rate of 20% over the past five years and has paid dividends consistently. Available at a price-earnings multiple of 11 times last year’s earnings, dealers say low liquidity is what has been keeping institutional investors at bay. The stock closed at Rs 690, down 3% over the previous close on low volumes.

Dealers may gain from exchange war

It is turf war at its very best. A leading stock exchange which recently advertised about its ‘powerful real time trading terminal’ on its website has fired a salvo at its competitors on the ground that it is more cost-effective. The buzz on D-Street is that the advert, which has drawn comparisons between its ‘free of cost trading terminal’ with that of a leading terminal in the market based on an instance of ‘100 user’ licences for 12 months,” alludes to a bourse that is waiting in the wings.

Even as there are rumblings of ‘unfair’ trade practices by the latter, the end users of this product (in this case the dealer community), are of the view that this kind of price competitiveness will serve to bring down costs across the marketplace.

Bulls raring to go on Bharti Airtel

Despite a market-wide ‘sell’ call, shares of Bharti Airtel is witnessing genuine buying interest from seasoned players. Apart from a couple of top-notch mutual funds, Rar(e)ing Bull’ along with his old friend Old Fox and a ‘gifted’ merchant banker are said to accumulating shares of the telecom firm. The trio is of the view that pessimism over Bharti’s proposed acquisition of Zain’s African assets has been overdone.

Funds make a beeline for Bajaj Holdings

The sharp fall in shares of Bajaj Holdings seems to have prompted funds to take a positive view on the stock. Reliance Capital picked up 11.6 lakh shares at Rs 550 apiece on Monday. Market sources attributed the fund buying to a possible reshuffling of portfolio in favour of stocks that look attractively valued after the recent correction.

Contributed by Apurv Gupta, Shailesh Menon, Vijay Gurav & Deeptha Rajkum ar

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Src:ET

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