Jet Airways jumps 8% as Jhunjhunwala buys 1% stake in airline

NEW DELHI: Shares of Jet Airways climbed over 8 per cent in Monday's trade after data furnished by NSE showed ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala picked up 1.05 per cent stake in the aviation company through his asset management firm Rare Enterprises.

Rare Enterprises bought 11,95,000 equity shares of Jet Airways on Friday at an average price of Rs 422.76, NSE data showed. Tracking the development, the stock jumped 8.08 per cent to hit a high of Rs 472 on BSE. Even at this price, the stock was trading nearly 15 per cent lower than its 52-week high of Rs 543.50 that it had hit in February.

Institutional holding in the company has fallen in the past couple of quarters. The category held 14.09 stake in the company as of September 30.

Jhunjhunwala has been adding aviation stocks to his portfolio of late. There were reports that Jhunjhunwala had placed a sizeble bid in the IPO of InterGlobe Aviation last week. In November, the ace investor bought 75 lakh shares or 1.4 per cent stake in budget carrier SpiceJet. That was in addition to the 25 lakh shares he had purchased in 2013, an ET report said.

There has been some optimism on the aviation counter amid hopes that a sharp drop in fuel price and rising domestic demand would boost bottom lines of the airlines in the days ahead. For the September quarter, Jet Airways reported 25.4 per cent YoY increase in standalone quarterly net profit at Rs 87.59 crore compared with Rs 69.82 crore reported for the year-ago quarter.