ICICI Bank, Hindustan Unilever, SBI, JBF Ind, Sintex Ind hit 52-week highs

ICICI Bank, Hindustan Unilever, State Bank of India (SBI), JBF Industries, Sintex Industries, Ceat and Finolex Industries are among 34 stocks from the S&P BSE500 index that hit their respective 52-week highs in otherwise range-bound market.

Bajaj Finance, Adani Transmission, DLF, Engineers India, Godrej Industries, Uflex, JSW Steel, Monsanto India, Sobha and Motilal Oswal Financial Services were also trading at their 52-week highs on BSE in intra-day trade.

At 10:51 am; the S&P BSE 500 index trading flat at 13,273 after hitting a record high of 13,289 in early morning deal. On comparison, the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex was up 0.06% at 30,602 on BSE.

JBF Industries has soared 11% to Rs 305 on back of an over five-fold jump in trading volumes. JBF manufactures three products - partially oriented yarn (POY), polyester biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate (BOPET) film and various types of bottle grade, film grade and textile grade polyester chips.

India Infoline, the local brokerage firm, recommended ‘buy’ rating on the stock with a one year target price of Rs 382.

“JBF has strengthened its presence in Polyester processing market through capacity addition and backward integration. Currently polyester’s share in globally consumed fibers is 50%; which can go up to 57% by 2020. Moreover, demand for BOPET films and chips will be driven by improving macro environment. JBF is well poised to capitalize on this opportunity as it is the second largest domestic supplier with capacity share of around 20% each in textile and bottle grade chips. It boasts of a capacity share of 70% in UAE and 45% in GCC in bottle grade chips,” IIFL said in a client note.

Sintex Industries hit 52-week high of Rs 121, up 3% on BSE after the company has fixed May 26, 2017 as a record date for the purpose of determination of entitlement for allotment of fully paid up equity shares of the face value of Re 1 of Sintex Plastics Technology.

Sintex Industries is demerging its non-textile businesses into Sintex Plastics Technology. The non-textile business comprises of custom moulding, prefab, tanks, etc. The new entity will be listed & will mirror shareholding of the current entity.

HUL hit a record high of Rs 1,005 on BSE ahead of its January-March (Q4FY17) results today.

Edelweiss Securities expects HUL to witness volume growth of 2% YoY on a base of 4% YoY (volumes dipped 4% YoY in Q3FY17 on a base of 6% YoY) helped by recovery in the on ground situation as consumption is back to predemonetisation level.

Business is back to normal from consumer perspective but wholesaler demand is still an issue. Rural demand in Q4FY17 has still seen some impact on wholesalers from demonetization, although impact is lower than in Q3FY17.

HUL has built direct distribution to address the liquidity issue. Soap industry is stablising back as the price hike has largely been taken. Also as palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) prices have seen a sharp increase which will help soaps pricing growth. Advertising and promotion (A&P) spends is expected to normalize (unlike in Q3FY17 when it was cut). We expect some expansion in margins as significant part of price hikes has been taken and raw material prices have started to taper off in the later part of the quarter, the brokerage firm said in quarterly preview.