Market Now: Telecom stocks mixed; Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel down 1%

NEW DELHI: Telecom stocks Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (down 2.39 per cent), Reliance Communications (down 2.20 per cent), Bharti Infratel (down 1.14 per cent), Idea Cellular (down 1.13 per cent), ITI (down 0.89 per cent), Bharti Airtel (down 0.56 per cent) and GTL (down 0.35 per cent) were trading down in afternoon trade on Thursday after the announcement of Union Budget 2018.

Telecom companies were disappointed that Budget 2018-19 has not addressed any of the key pain points of the financially stressed telecoms industry that is already plagued by brutal price wars and debt upwards of Rs 7 lakh-crore.

The BSE Telecom index was trading 0.32 per cent down at 1,473 around 02:30 pm (IST).


However, shares of Aksh Optifibre (up 4.50 per cent), Tejas Networks (up 3.91 per cent), Sterlite Technologies (up 3.23 per cent), Himachal Futuristic Communications (up 2.40 per cent), Vindhya Telelinks (up 2.23 per cent), Tata Communications (up 1.66 per cent), GTL Infrastructure (up 1.39 per cent), OnMobile Global (up 1.27 per cent) and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (up 0.14 per cent) were up in the index around that time.

Benchmark NSE Nifty50 index was 10 points up at 11,037, while the BSE Sensex was 63 points up at 36,028.

Among the 50 stocks in the Nifty50 index, 22 were trading in the green, while 28 were in the red.

ITC, Mahindra & Mahindra, IndusInd Bank, Larsen & Toubro and YES Bank were among the top gainers in the Sensex index.

However, ONGC, Dr Reddy's Labs, Sun Pharma and Reliance Industries were among the top losers.