COST Financial News

Spirit Airlines (NYSE:SAVE) stock is down a further 18.5% in early New York trading on Wednesday after a federal judge blocked JetBlue's (JBLU) $3.8 billion acquisition, prompting concerns about the feasibility of other mergers in the airline industry.

Asian Paints Ltd consolidated net profit jumped 35% on year to ₹1,447.7 crore in the December quarter helped by a double-growth in volumes and as operating profit got a boost from lower raw material costs. The country’s largest paint-maker’s volume growth of 12% was largely in line with market expectations, while the bottomline was marginally ahead of Street estimates. Consolidated sales, meanwhile, rose by a little over 5% to ₹9,074.9 crore. The company has guided for its volume momentum and the softness in raw material prices sustaining in the current quarter.

₹1,491.95, hit on December 1, 2023. Despite the muted returns, global brokerage house Jefferies has a ‘buy’ call on the insurance stock with a target price of ₹1,730, implying an over 19 percent upside. The brokerage elevated ICICI Lombard to one of its top picks, citing five compelling triggers for optimism.

NEW DELHI : The Union government’s food subsidy bill for fiscal year 2023-24 is likely to overshoot the budgeted estimate of ₹1.97 trillion, prompting the food department to seek additional funds primarily to support its flagship programme. Revised allocation for the ongoing fiscal year is expected to go up by 3% to ₹2.02 trillion, a top official of the department of food and public distribution told Mint.

Blue Star share price gained 1.7% in intraday trades on Wednesday and closed with gains of almost 1%. Voltas share price also ended the day with gains of 0.16% on the BSEon a day when benchmark indices were down more than 2%.

Hennion & Walsh Asset Management President and CIO Kevin Mahn discusses the state of the Fed's inflation fight after consumer prices rose more than expected in December on 'The Big Money Show.'

(Reuters) -Manchester United cut its annual revenue and profit forecasts on Wednesday, after the English Premier League club was knocked out of Europe's top tier Champions League tournament in the early stages this season.

By Douglas Gillison

By Paul Carsten

SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) -SAIC Motor Corp plans to add 14 vehicle vessels in the next three years to its fleet of carriers as the state-owned Chinese automaker aims to boost sales in overseas markets, it said on Wednesday.

food and fertilizer subsidies for the next fiscal year, indicating fiscal caution ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections, said two government sources as quoted by Reuters. During the current fiscal year, which concludes on March 31, India's total budget spending is 45 trillion rupees, of which approximately one-ninth comes from subsidies on food and fertiliser. They said the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has projected that the cost of food subsidies in 2019 will be 2.2 trillion rupees ($26.52 billion).

It’s hard to think of a worse environmental scandal in recent years than Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel-emissions cheating. The German automaker was rightly pursued by regulators, enforcement agencies and class-action lawyers. The scandal ended up costing Volkswagen an estimated $33 billion in fines and financial settlements—and revealed that diesel-emissions cheating was endemic.

Davos: Supply cuts by OPEC , costly shipments from some traditional Middle East suppliers and geopolitical tension is driving India, the world's third biggest oil importer, to diversify its crude sources and accelerate its energy transition, its Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said. "Whenever there is vulnerability and uncertainty in the market, the transition gets accelerated.

Gopal Balachandran, CFO & CRO, ICICI Lombard, says “for CICI Lombard, the growth momentum in motor insurance has been quite positive and in fact, in December, we gained market share. The industry grew at about 8.8% in overall motor. Our growth in motor was almost about 10.8% and therefore when we look at heading into quarter four, I think we are very positive in terms of the opportunity that the segment presents and we have got all the right levers in terms of distribution service and technology which should aid us to kind of sustain the momentum that one is seeing in the context of motor.” The motor segment has seen quite a healthy growth and has largely been aided by strong private vehicle and two-wheeler sales. What is your outlook? Will this sustain? Gopal Balachandran: If you look at the market environment in the context of auto vehicle sales, across segments we have seen a lot of positive momentum getting played out, which is what we had put out even as a part of our analyst call that we had last evening. If you look at it on the private car side, for example, we have seen almost close to about three million vehicles getting sold. On two-wheelers, we have seen for the market almost close to about 13 million vehicles getting sold and on the commercial vehicle side, almost more than one million plus vehicles getting sold. So, in that sense, the market momentum seems to be very positive.

insurance cover under its flagship Ayushman Bharat health scheme to Rs 10 lakh to ensure that serious diseases like cancer and transplants that entail more expenditure are supported by it, official sources said on Wednesday. An announcement to this effect is likely to be made in the interim Union Budget on February 1, the sources told PTI. The Union health ministry is also planning to double the beneficiaries to 100 crore under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) to include Kisan Samman Nidhi recipients, construction workers, non-coal mine workers and ASHA workers in the next three years. «In order to ensure that serious illnesses requiring expenditure of more than Rs 5 lakh such as transplants and high-cost cancer treatments etc. are also covered under AB PMJAY, the ministry is working on finalising a proposal to increase the cover amount from Rs 5 lakh per family per year to Rs 10 lakh per family per year from 2023-24 onwards,» the sources said. The increase in coverage to Rs 10 lakh per family per year and increase in beneficiary base to 100 crore individuals will involve an additional allocation of Rs 12,076 crore per annum, the sources stated.

Bajaj Finance with a Sell rating and a target price of ₹6,800 per share, implying a downside of 9% from Tuesday’s closing price. It expects Bajaj Finance’s yields to be under pressure in urban consumer financing business, which formed 37% of standalone Assets Under Management, 45% of interest earned and over 60% of core fee income in FY23.

A continued dull show on the margin front in the December quarter (Q3FY24) caught HDFC Bank Ltd’s investors off-guard. Remember, Q2’s muted margin was understandable as the quarter was the first one post the merger with HDFC Ltd. Thus, when the bank clocked net interest margin (NIM) on total assets of 3.4% in Q3, flat sequentially, investors punished the stock, taking it down by nearly 7% on Wednesday.

Asian Paints is likely to post a mixed bag performance during the quarter ending December. The paint demand as per analysts though was satisfactory during festival month of November, nevertheless lost steam thereafter. The monsoon pattern remined erratic and was not supportive for huge pick up in demand during the quarter.

Cost of Living Live Updates Jan 17: Rising inflation rates globally have significantly increased the cost of living, impacting the financial well-being of the average person. However, there is a bit of relief as India's retail inflation experienced a considerable decrease in September, reaching a three-month low.The government has cut the windfall tax on domestically-produced crude oil to ₹1,700 per tonne from ₹2,300 per tonne with effect from Tuesday.The tax is levied in the form of Special Additional Excise Duty (SAED).According to an official notification, SAED on export of diesel, petrol and jet fuel or ATF has been retained at nil.The new rates are effective from January 16.India first imposed windfall profit taxes on July 1, 2022, joining a growing number of nations that tax supernormal profits of energy companies.The central government has imposed a 50 per cent export duty on molasses, amid a possibility of a decline in domestic sugar production in the current season.The proposed export duty shall come into force on January 18, 2024, an official notification from the Ministry of Finance said.Molasses are a by-product of sugar which is utilised for ethanol production to promote a green economy.

₹145.80 apiece on the BSE. Federal Bank registered a 25.3% growth in its net profit for the third quarter of FY24 at ₹1,006.74 crore as compared to ₹803.61 crore in the corresponding quarter of last year. The bank’s net interest income (NII) in Q3FY24 increased 8.5% to ₹2,123.4 crore from ₹1,956.5 crore, YoY.

₹ 6,000 crore. The initial allocation is specifically aimed at supporting 1 GW of offshore wind capacity, and the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) has sent the proposal to the finance ministry, two people familiar with the developments told Mint. Queries sent to MNRE and finance ministry remained unanswered till press time.