Amtek Auto stock slides 37% as ‘FIIs rush to exit’

MUMBAI: The share price of Amtek Auto on Thursday crashed 37%, leading analysts to believe that selling by foreign institutional investors is taking a heavy toll on its share price.

The stock, which will be pushed out of the derivative segment from October, closed at Rs 31.5 on the BSE, with the market cap of the company slipping to Rs 695 crore. “Today’s (Thursday’s) fall in Amtek Auto was a surprise as derivative positions did not suggest any margin call pressure like earlier,” said SP Tulsian, founder, Premium Investments. “The only logical conclusion for the sharp fall could be that institutional players were scrambling to exit the counter.”

Foreign investors’ holding in Amtek Auto came down to 18.8% at the end of the quarter ended June from 35.1% in the previous quarter. Domestic institutional investors, however, raised their stake to 16.4% from 5.1% in the same period.

The stock has lost 81.6% of its market capitalisation in just over a month. Thursday was the fourth time in a month that Amtek Auto crashed over 20%.

Amtek Auto had clarified that there was some “temporary cash flow mismatch”, and to mitigate the situation, the promoters had infused Rs 75 crore into the company. The company has a consolidated top line of Rs 15,000 crore and its major outgo is interest on loan or borrowing, analysts said.

The share prices of the subsidiary companies of Amtek Auto have been hitting the lower circuit for many days now. On Thursday, Castex Technologies fell 4.9% to Rs 51.9.