Hindustan Unilever, Maruti Suzuki, ACC, Power Grid hit new highs

STOCK MARKET - Five companies – Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Maruti Suzuki India, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (SEZ), ACC and Power Grid Corporation – from the Nifty50 index hit their respective all-time highs on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in intra-day trade on Tuesday.

Other companies like Biocon, Birla Corporation, Dalima Bharat, Future Consumer, OCL India, Quess Corp and Tata Investment Corporation from the Nifty 500 and S&P BSE 500 indices hit their record highs too in today's trade.

HUL hit a new high of Rs 1,190, up 3% on BSE in intra-day, ahead of April-June quarter (Q1FY18) results today.

Analysts at Edelweiss Securities expect HUL to record a volume decline of around 1-2% year-on-year (YoY) on a base of 4% YoY (volumes grew 4% YoY in Q4FY17 on a base of 4% YoY) owing to impact in CSD (canteen-store-departments) sales (CSD offtake has been negligible over past 1 month – CSD contributes 5-6% of sales), destocking in wholesale channel owing to GST.

GST albeit will not impact the consumer demand but destocking by wholesalers is inevitable - share of wholesale lower for HUL and hence impact would be lower compared to many other staple companies.