Fortis loses 10% in a week as FII dumps shares

When some market operators were ramping up the price of Fortis Healthcare in recent months, little did they imagine that the steep rise during the period would drive value investors to dump the stock.

Fortis shares, which fell 3.5% to Rs 163.50 on Thursday, has fallen 10% in the past week. With support from friendly circles, the operators had push up the stock price sharply between December 2009 and March 2010 to Rs 187, from Rs 108.

However, the company’s earnings don’t justify this swift climb. After making losses for many quarters, the company managed to make some meagre profits for the quarters ended September and December 2009.

Dealers tracking the counter said that a foreign institutional investor had been offloading sizeable chunks in the past few days.

In the futures segment, there has been a huge addition of open interest along with a decrease in price, indicating a creation of short positions. The company was in the news recently, after it bought a 23.9% stake in Singapore’s Parkway Holdings.


Contributed by Harish Rao, Apurv Gupta & Nishanth Vasudevan