Share market surge in early trade powered by rally in IT stocks

Mumbai: Benchmark equity indices surged in early trade on Friday, driven by a rally in IT stocks and a firm trend in Asian markets.

The 30-share BSE Sensex jumped 492.71 points to 72,213.89 in early deals. The Nifty climbed 141.95 points to 21,789.15.

Among the Sensex firms, Infosys jumped more than 6 per cent in early trade despite reporting a lower-than-expected 7.3 per cent fall in net profit in the December quarter on sluggish demand from clients and cut its annual sales forecast.

Tata Consultancy Services climbed nearly 4 per cent after the largest software exporter reported an 8.2 per cent growth in net income for the December quarter at Rs 11,735 crore, driven by a massive growth in the home market that offset to a large extent the impact of a 3 per cent degrowth in the US market.

The other prominent gainers were Wipro, Tech Mahindra, HCL Technologies and JSW Steel.

Mahindra & Mahindra, Asian Paints, Power Grid, Nestle, Hindustan Unilever and Titan were among the laggards.

"With inline results from Infosys and better-than-expected results from TCS, IT stocks will see some action today. Even though there is no positive message from the management commentary, the market is likely to respond positively to the absence of any bad news," V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said.

The US CPI inflation inching up to 3.4 per cent year-on-year is slightly negative from the global equity market perspective, he added.

In Asian markets, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong were trading higher while Seoul quoted lower.

The US markets ended mostly in the green on Thursday.

Global oil benchmark Brent crude jumped 1.82 per cent to USD 78.82 a barrel.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded equities worth Rs 865 crore on Thursday, according to exchange data.

The BSE benchmark climbed 63.47 points or 0.09 per cent to settle at 71,721.18 on Thursday. The Nifty gained 28.50 points or 0.13 per cent to 21,647.20.