Market Update : Results to dictate trends

Q4 set to mirror Q3 success story, Outlook positively cautious

The Indian markets ended flat yesterday with a positive bias at the end of the session. The current flavour of the markets is the earning season which is going to be kicked off in a major way from Friday with tech bell weather Infosys declaring its results. The coming week would be driven mainly by the results.

Looking Beyond Results
Yes, more than the results, investors are awaiting what Infosys has to say for its outlook on the IT business and how does it moves its guidance numbers for the next year. Investors, of late, have been on the sidelines with news of appreciating rupee against dollar and slow down in US economy creating unceratinty on the prospects of IT companies. Well the market leader is expected to clear the fog and bring clearity on the impact of the above two factors on the performance of IT companies.

Asian markets on a firm ground
Asian markets continued to gain backed by positive clues from the US markets and news that Bank of Japan is in no hurry to raise interest rates.

Japan's Nikkei was up 14.33 points while Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.42% or 86.01 points.
South Korea's Seoul Composite gained 1.12%,Taiwan surged 0.49% and Singapore's Straits Times advanced 0.04%.

Stocks in News

Jet gets "Sahara"
Jet Airways is understood to have negotiated a takeover of Air Sahara after hanging it for around nine months. The imapct of the deal would be cleared once the parties finally declare the deal, however, the deal would defintely provide jet with the much needed economies of scale which has become a deciding factor in the competitive aviation sector. Investment guru blog will bring out a post on the post deal scenario soon.

I-Gate Global Solutions
iGATE Global Solutions has announced its fourth quarter results. The company reported net profit of Rs 22.6 crore (Rs 226 million) versus Rs 15.95 crore (Rs 159.5 million), a growth of 41.69% QoQ. Its revenues declined by 0.29% to Rs 210.1 crore (Rs 2.10 billion) from Rs 210.73 crore (Rs 2.10 billion) in the previous quarter. The EBITDA margin stood at 15.3% in fourth quarter. The EPS was at Rs 15.97

Gujarat NRE Coke
The company reported net profit of Rs 50.9 crore in the fourth quarter versus loss of Rs 42.3 crore in the corresponding quarter of previous year. Its net sales increased to Rs 179 crore from Rs 84 crore. The OPM improved to 36.7% versus 6.3%. The company's FY07 EPS stood at Rs 2.34.