Sensex loses 360 points, Nifty ends at 10,350; RIL leads the plunge, Lupin, Cipla worst losers

Sensex and Nifty lost up to 1%, ended down after the slump in the shares of Reliance Industries, Lupin and State Bank of India. However, domestic stock markets hit the fresh record highs in the early afternoon trade. The sell-off in the stocks of heavyweight companies such as Lupin, Cipla, Bharti Airtel, State Bank of India, RIL, Tata Motors and Sun Pharma led the indices into the red. Indian stock markets are weighing on the mixed sentiments about Q2 corporate earnings. BSE Sensex lost 360.43 points or 1.07% to finish at 33,370.76 points while NSE Nifty washed off 101.65 points or 0.97% to end at 10,350.15 points.

Shares of the Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company Lupin dived nearly 18% to hit the 52-week low on Tuesday after the US drug regulator issued warnings for company’s two sites. USFDA issued a combined warning letter for company’s Goa and Indore (Pithampur Unit II) sites. The stock of the drugmaker was the worst loser, tanked as much as 17.73% to hit the 52-week low of Rs 851.2 before closing down 16.84% 860.5 on BSE. “We are deeply disappointed to receive this outcome. While there will be no disruption of existing product supplies from either of these locations, there will likely be a delay of new product approvals from these two facilities,” Lupin said in an exchange filing.

Other major laggards include SBI (down 3.57%), Airtel (down 3.45%), RIL (down 2.98%) and Sun Pharma (down 2.5%) while on the other hand, Infosys, TCS, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Wipro gained up to 2.92%. The blue-chip stocks of RIL, SBI, Lupin, HDFC, ICICI Bank, Cipla and Bharti Airtel contributed heavily to the Sensex drop. Collectively these seven stocks alone shaved off about 292 points out of the 360-point plunge in the index. The benchmark Sensex dropped as much as 389.37 points to hit the day’s low of 33,341.82 whereas the broader Nifty lost 111 points to mark the day’s low at 10,340.8.

Shares of Cipla tumbled more than 8% on Tuesday even after the pharmaceutical company reported a rise of 19% in the consolidated net profit. India’s second-largest drugmaker Cipla’s consolidated net profit was at Rs 423 crore for the July-September quarter for the financial year 2017-2018. The company had reported a net profit of Rs 354 crore in the corresponding period of FY 2016-2017. Following the results announcement, the stock of Cipla crashed as much as 8.24% to hit the day’s low of Rs 601.4 before closing down 7.18% at Rs 608.35 on BSE.