Stocks to Watch: RIL, Future Retail, Vedanta, ONGC, Cipla, Adani Enterprises

Reliance Industries: Subsidiary Jio Platforms will invest $200 million in Glance, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven lock-screen live content and commerce platform. Singapore-based Glance is an unconsolidated unit of InMobi Group, which is backed by technology giant Google and Silicon Valley-based venture fund Mithril Capital. Google also has investments in Jio as part of its Google for India Digitization Fund.

Future Retail: The company’s consolidated net loss widened to ₹1,063.36 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December from ₹846.92 crore loss reported in the year-ago period. Total income during October-December jumped 86.85% year-on-year to ₹2,815.68 crore.

Vedanta Ltd: Has partnered Taiwan’s Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, to make semiconductors in India, as they seek to capitalise on a global chip shortage and also benefit from the Indian government’s support towards chip manufacturing. Vedanta will be the majority shareholder in a new joint venture company with Foxconn. 

Adani Enterprises: Reported a 99.4% year-on-year decline in its consolidated profit to ₹1.80 crore for the quarter ended December. Consolidated income during the third quarter of FY22 rose to ₹18,963.40 crore from ₹11,787.82 crore in the year-ago period.

Coal India: Has announced a second interim dividend of ₹5 per share and the total payout will be ₹3,087 crore. This will make the government richer by ₹2,037.8 crore as it holds a 66.1% stake in the miner. In the first interim dividend of ₹9 apiece, announced in December, total payout was ₹5546 crore and the government gained ₹3,667 crore. 

ONGC: Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC’s) delayed Krishna Godavari basin KG-D5 project is likely to hit peak oil and natural gas output in 2023-24 and will help the firm to reverse the downward slide in its overall production.

Cipla Ltd: Promoters of drugmaker Cipla Ltd, Yusuf Khwaja Hamied and Mustafa Khwaja Hamied, will sell up to 2.5% of their stake in the company to institutional investors through a block trade that could fetch as much as ₹1,849 crore, or $244.6 million. Cipla’s promoters held a 36.11% stake in the company as of 31 December.

IndusInd Bank: An internal probe by the lender is said to have found procedural lapses by its wholly owned subsidiary Bharat Financial Inclusion (BFIL) in loan disbursements to microfinance borrowers at the peak of the pandemic. Deloitte India, which is doing an external review on the matter, is likely to submit its report in a week’s time.

SpiceJet Ltd: The budget carrier’s board will meet on 15 February consider and approve the third-quarter earnings. The meeting was earlier scheduled on Monday. The decision to defer the meeting was taken after the audit committee’s meeting on 14 February to approve third-quarter financial results remained ‘inconclusive’ and was adjourned to Tuesday.

Jet Airways: Jet Airways, which is working to resume operations that were grounded nearly three years ago, will receive ₹50 crore as inter-corporate deposit from a company owned by Jalan group for certain expenses. Murari Lal Jalan and Florian Fritsch consortium’s resolution plan for the grounded carrier was approved by the National Company Law Tribunal in June 2021 under the insolvency resolution process.