MUMBAI: The nation’s largest lender State Bank of India on Monday made a few brownie points by becoming the sixth biggest company in terms of market capitalization with over Rs 8 trillion in value, which also makes it the most valued government entity and the third most valuable bank.
At the end of trading hours on Monday when the market was on steroids after exit polls gave a clear third term to Narendra Modi, with the Sensex rallying by 3.4 percent and the Nifty soaring by 2.35 percent, the SBI counter closed at 905.80 on the BSE, gaining as much as 9.12 percent over Friday’s close with a mcap of Rs 8,08390.27 crore or Rs 8.08 trillion. The stock rallied more than 12 percent intra-day to hit a high of Rs 912.10. Its shares have soared over 40 percent so far this year.
SBI also made history last month by becoming the most profitable company in the March quarter booking a whopping Rs 20,968 crore in net income, which is way higher than RIL, HDFC Bank and TCS, the otherwise most profitable entities.
The others with over Rs 8 trillion m-cap are Reliance Industries (Rs 20.44 trillion), Tata Consultancy Services (Rs 13.41 trillion), HDFC Bank (Rs 11.95 trillion), ICICI Bank (Rs 8.15 trillion) and Bharti Airtel (Rs 8.05 trillion). Infosys was also in the Rs 8 trillion club in the past but has since lost a lot of its value and is only worth Rs 5.83 trillion now.
Among the public sector block, LIC is the second biggest by far with Rs 6.75 trillion followed by NTPC at Rs 3.80 trillion, ONGC at Rs 3.57 trillion and Powergrid at Rs 3.14 trillion.
Banking stocks were on a roll today as exit polls predicted a sweeping win for the BJP, with other stocks like BoB, IDBI Bank ICICI, HDFC Indusind etc gaining handsomely.
After the stellar March quarter earnings, most brokerages have a buy call on SBI with over 30 percent upside in the medium term.
