By Bharath Rajeswaran
(Reuters) -India’s benchmark indexes fell on Friday, dragged down by a drop in IT company Infosys and private lender Axis Bank after their quarterly results.
The Nifty 50 fell 0.35% to 23,229.1 points as of 10:05 a.m. IST, while the BSE Sensex shed 0.45% to 76,699.08.
Axis Bank lost 5.2% after the lender’s quarterly profit missed market estimates due to slower loan growth and a rise in provisions for bad loans.
Infosys dropped 5.4%. It beat quarterly revenue estimates but Morgan Stanley said that was driven by a higher component of third-party items in its deal pipeline, “which raises concerns over the quality of results.”
Infosys dragged the IT index 2.6% lower.
“Markets are all over the place. Though there was a pullback rally for benchmarks over the last three sessions, the uncertainty and concerns over earnings moderation continue to hurt sentiment,” said Saurabh Jain, assistant vice president of retail equities research at SMC Global Securities.
“Specifically today, investors believe that the revenue growth in Infosys is out of sync with the expensive valuations, which is prompting the selling.”
Infosys and Axis Bank were the top losers among Nifty 50 stocks.
The biggest gainer was Reliance, also the second-heaviest weighted stock on the index, which climbed 2.2% after it topped third-quarter profit estimates on strong demand in its retail and telecom units.
Among other stocks, LTIMindtree fell 3.5% after the IT company posted a drop in December-quarter profit.
Dairy products maker Hatsun Agro Products lost 4.5% on reporting a fall in third-quarter profit.
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
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