Indian shares post first weekly fall in over a month, Reliance drags

BENGALURU: Indian shares posted their first weekly decline in more than a month on Friday due to a selloff in Reliance Industries, but gains in State Bank of India and pharma stocks kept losses in check.

The NSE Nifty 50 index fell 0.26pc to 11,073.45 and the S&P BSE Sensex dropped 0.34pc to 37,606.89.

For the week, the NSE and BSE indexes slid for the first time since mid-June by 1.08pc and 1.37pc, respectively.

On a monthly basis, however, Nifty and Sensex were up 7.5pc and 7.7pc, respectively.

Shares of Reliance Industries, India's most valuable company, fell as much as 2.7pc in the session, after the company's revenue from operations fell almost 44pc as the coronavirus crisis slammed its refining and petrochemicals businesses.

The conglomerate's stock had gained for eight out of the last 10 sessions and saw its market capitalization cross 13 trillion rupees ($174.01 billion) during that time.

State Bank of India (SBI), India's biggest lender by assets, rose as much as 4.4pc after its profit surged and bad-loan provisioning fell in the quarter to June.

SBI's results boosted the Nifty state-owned banking index up 1.2pc.

The country's biggest drugmaker Sun Pharma also rose as much as 6pc after its results, helping the Nifty pharma index gain nearly 4pc in the session.

Sun Pharma's rival Cipla rose over 5pc and topped the Nifty gainers.

Smaller drugmakers Laurus Labs and Torrent Pharma advanced 19pc and 13pc, respectively, after they reported strong results.

Bus and motorcycle maker Eicher Motors was the top laggard, falling 2.74pc, while large shadow lender HDFC shed 1.6pc.

India's coronavirus cases surged by over 55,000 in the past 24 hours to 1.64 million, government data showed.

A Reuters poll published on Wednesday said the outlook for Asia's third-largest economy has worsened as business activity slows due to infections.