At this point of time any investor can buy at least five A-Group companies with less than Rs 100 crore each. These are Atlas Copco, Esab India, Bausch & Lomb, Sesa Goa and Trent. They are not at all in bad shape.Most of them made profit during the last quarter. For example, the net profit of Atlas Copco was Rs 1.67 crore as on September 30, 2000. Esab India also made a profit of Rs 3.81 crore during the same period. On the other hand, Trent Ltd showed an increase of 9.16 per cent to Rs 3.14 crore in its net profit as on September 30, 2000 from Rs 2.88 crore in the same period last year.
Despite making profit, these companies are not getting a good price in the market. This was revealed in a study of 139 A-Group companies' market capitalisation as on November 6, 2000. On that day, the total market capital was Rs 4,68,212 crore and the total equity capital was Rs 24,433 crore. So the ratio of market cap to equity cap stood at 1916.29 per cent.
The top 10 companies in terms of market capitalisation as on November 6 were Wipro (Rs 53,577.99 crore), Infosys Technologies (Rs 50,226.69 crore), Hindustan Lever (Rs 39,181.68 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs 32,937.50 crore), Reliance Petro (Rs 31,449.52 crore), ITC (Rs 19,737.10 crore), Zee Telefilms (Rs 13,567.96 crore), Satyam Computer(Rs 10,868.38 crore), Himachal Futuristic (Rs 10,576.07 crore) and MTNL (Rs 10,209.15 crore). Six of these companies are from IT group. All of them made good profit during the last quarter.
The net profit of Wipro increased by 116.3 per cent to Rs 154 crore during July-September 2000. Similarly, Himachal Futuristic also showed a growth of 385.4 per cent to Rs 94.61 crore in its net profit during the same period. pThis indicates that the only IT companies are doing well in the A-Group shares.
The share of these 10 A-Group companies in total market capital as on November 6 was 58.16 per cent. On the other hand, the bottom 10 companies in terms of market capital are Atlas Copco (Rs 59.12 crore), Esab (Rs 86.11 crore), Bausch & Lomb (Rs 91.68 crore), Sesa Goa (Rs 92.59 crore), Trent (Rs 95.97 crore), Voltas (Rs 101.79 crore), Supreme Industries (Rs 102.97 crore), LML (Rs 108.50 crore), Kesoram Industries (Rs 116.06 crore) and Arvind Mills (Rs 117.64 crore). Out of these, Arvind Mills made a loss of Rs 108.82 crore during July-September 2000. The share of these companies in total market capitalisation was 0.21 per cent only.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.