Tale of the Tape 

Hola Amigos! 

Nifty and Sensex ended flat after a boring, range-bound session. Midcaps (-1.1%) and Smallcaps (-1.6%) continued to drag lower, with 385 stocks in the NSE 500 ending in the red!

Most sectors ended lower. Real Estate (-2.1%) was the top loser, followed by Auto (-1.5%) and Energy (-1.2%). NBFCs (+0.6%)bucked the market trend. PS - check out our charts section below to find out why? t

UltraTech Cement shook up the wires & cables sector today with its big entry. Read our top story for how this will play out.

Brokers want you to trade big with margin trading facilities. More details below on why you should stay the hell away.

Nuvama Wealth Management fell -6% after reports said promoter PAG plans to sell its majority stake in the company.

AI-related stocks including Anant Raj, Netweb and E2E Networks fell between -4% and -6% after Nvidia warned of a margin dip in upcoming Q1.

Prestige Estates (-5%) was down after reports said income tax officials raided their offices.

SRF was up in an otherwise weak market. Emkay sees a +15% upside from current levels.

Here are the closing prints:

Stocks
Make Way For The King!

Ultratech Cement has announced its foray into the wires & cables (W&C) sector! The Aditya Birla firm will invest Rs 1,800 cr and build a new plant in Gujarat by Dec 2026. 

For the unaware, the sector is a Rs 80,000-cr industry, with organised & branded players accounting for over 70% of capacity. That said, it is heavily fragmented, with the largest player having less than -18% market share. 

It’s also clear what Birla has in mind: to make the conglomerate a one-stop shop for real estate & construction. It already supplies cement & paint. And fun fact: 80% of India’s demand for wires also comes from housing. The group also has synergies with Hindalco, which produces copper, the biggest raw material for making wires & cables!

The fallout from the announcement was quick: incumbents Havells, Polycab and KEI crashed between -10% to -20% intraday. But experts say that this may be a knee-jerk reaction. Consider this. CLSA projects the overall industry would need to grow at 11%-13% CAGR over the next five years to absorb all new capacity. This isn’t a tough ask, considering it was already being projected by analysts.

Finally, it will take time for Ultratech to ramp up. Nuvama projects the company will only be able to snag less than a 5% market share in its 3rd year. The brokerage says this really won’t have a big impact on W&C industry volumes or margins in the medium-term.

Ultratech itself fell -5% and was the top Nifty loser. This is because until now it was a pure cement play; investors may not want to account for other variables. Also, most analysts say W&C distribution will be tough to build out. So watch this space!