Indian share markets extended gains as the session progressed and ended on a strong note, driven by realty stocks and index heavyweight Reliance Industries.
Reliance Industries became the first Indian company to be valued at US$ 150 billion. Shares of the company rose 8% intraday today after the group's chairman Mukesh Ambani said the conglomerate was now net debt-free after recent investments in its digital arm.
At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 524 points (up 1.5%).
Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty closed higher by 153 points (up 1.5%).
The SGX Nifty was trading at 10,221, up by 149 points, at the time of writing.
The BSE Mid Cap index ended up by 1%, while the BSE Small Cap index ended the day up by 1.4%.
On the sectoral front, gains were largely seen in the realty sector and energy sector.
Asian stock markets ended on a positive note as investors cheered the latest breakthrough in trade negotiations between America and China.
As of the most recent closing prices, the Nikkei ended up by 0.6% while the Shanghai Composite stood higher by 1%. The Hang Seng ended up by 0.7%.
The rupee is trading at 76.20 against the US$.
Gold prices are trading up by 0.1% at Rs 47,390 per 10 grams.
Speaking of the current stock market scenario, note that the coronavirus impact has shaken markets worldwide.
For the BSE Sensex, FY20 was the second-worst year post FY08, the year of the global financial crisis.
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Moving on, market participants were tracking sugar stocks today after it was reported that the government is considering a proposal to increase the minimum selling price of sugar from the current Rs 31 per kg.
"The government is considering a proposal to increase the minimum selling price (MSP) of sugar from Rs 31 per kg in order to help millers clear cane dues of about Rs 22,000 crore to farmers," a PTI report said, quoting food secretary Sudhanshu Pandey.
Shares of Balrampur Chini, E.I.D. Parry, Dalmia Bharat Sugar and Dwarikesh Sugar gained in the range of 2-7%.
In news from the IT sector, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was among the top buzzing stocks today.
TCS and IBM on Thursday announced to expand their global alliance with establishing an IBM Enterprise Cloud Architecture Unit to help customers on their digital transformation journey.
The IBM Enterprise Cloud Architecture Unit would include technical professionals from both companies.
TCS and IBM plan to co-develop solutions designed to help clients migrate workloads across applications, analytics, data estate and platforms, using IBM Cloud Paks, enterprise-ready containerized software solutions running on Red Hat OpenShift, the companies said in a statement.
TCS share price ended the day up by 0.5%.
Moving on to news from the FMCG sector, shares of Bajaj Consumer Care slipped as much as 8% intraday today after the company reported a 61% decline in its consolidated net profit at Rs 232.9 million for the fourth quarter ended March 2020 (Q4FY20).
The company had posted a profit of Rs 598.2 million during the January-March quarter of the previous fiscal.
The total revenue of the company dropped by 27.8% to Rs 1,787.6 million during the quarter under review as against Rs 2,474.4 million in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.
For the full year, the company's net profit declined 16.6% to Rs 1,847.7 million as against Rs 2,215.9 million in the previous fiscal.
Sales declined 7.2% to Rs 8,257.6 million as against Rs 8,900.7 million in the year-ago period.
The company's board recommended a dividend of 200% (i.e. Rs 2 per share on equity shares of the face value of Rs 1 each) for the financial year ended March 31, 2020.
The company also informed that the board has approved the appointment of Jaideep Nandi as Managing Director of the Company effective July 1, 2020. Mr. Nandi will replace Mr. Sumit Malhotra based on the recommendation of the Nomination, Remuneration and Corporate Governance Committee.
Bajaj Consumer Care share price ended the day down by 1.6%.
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