Strong Jewellery Demand Drives Titan Stock To All Time High
Watch and jewellery company Titan Co.'s market capitalisation crossed the Rs 3 lakh crore mark as its shares hit an all-time high on Tuesday, reflecting strong overall consumer demand and for jewellery
Our Top Reports For Today
- [00:00] Stories Of The Day
- [01:00] Strong jewellery demand drives Titan stock to all time high.
- [06:44] Amazon says it will export $20 billion via ecommerce sales from India
- [12:15] The Bay Area drama, will Sam Altman return to OpenAI. Whats at staker?
- [20:25] And now, an ETF fund that tracks weight loss drug companies like Ozempic.
- [21:35] Satellite internet is one step closer to launching in India
NOTE: This transcript contains only the host's monologue and does not include any interviews or discussions that might be within the podcast. Please refer to the episode audio if you wish to quote the people interviewed. Email [email protected] for any queries.
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Markets And More
The main indices snapped a 2-day losing run on Tuesday with the BSE Sensex rising 276 points to end at 65,931 while the Nifty50 closed at 19,783, higher by 89 points.
Watch and jewellery company - or is it the other way round - Titan Co.'s market capitalisation crossed the Rs 3 lakh crore mark as its shares hit an all-time high on Tuesday, reflecting strong overall consumer demand and for jewellery.
A Reuters report earlier said with gold prices easing before the festivities, there was a 60% year-on-year (YoY) surge in the demand for gold by jewellers.
Titan’s market value ended at Rs 3.01 lakh crore, while its stock touched a record Rs 3,401.
The company's market cap crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore mark in March 2019, BQ Prime said. So far this year, the market cap has risen 30% from Rs 2.3 lakh crore.
The story of course is to do with the rising consumption of branded jewellery - Titan is the largest and its growth despite gold prices rising over 17% in a year.
Titan opened 68 stores during the quarter, taking the total count to 2,613, as of September this year with most stores added for jewellery, BQ Prime pointed out.
Titan was helmed by Tata Group veteran Xerxes Desai, now no more.
From my recollection of visiting the Titan offices two decades ago, both the watch and the jewellery business were first led by senior personnel poached from state-owned HMT or Hindustan Machine Tools. HMT used to make watches too, in Bangalore being where Titan is headquartered as well.
The duo I met may have retired or moved on but the legacy of a watch company that diversified into jewellery at a time many thought it was a foolish punt has clearly taken Titan places.
Tesla Gets One Step Closer
No final decision has been made and the plans could change, but India is closing in on an agreement with Tesla Inc. that would allow the US automaker to ship its electric cars to the country from next year and set up a factory within two years, Bloomberg is reporting.
The move to allow Tesla to import cars, particularly at lower tariffs is a landmark move and would be unfair to car makers both domestic and international car makers already in India with large local manufacturing investments over time.
Car makers have quite likely already raised the prospect of this with the Government who have reportedly said they would not discriminate against anyone.
But Tesla getting the opportunity to import into India at scale at lower duties at this point would definitely be a favour whichever way it is packaged.
It also means that Tesla, which is weighing investing in multiple countries even at this point will pretty much get its way, which if seen from its point of view as a company steadily expanding global manufacturing capacity with larger markets first including US, China and Germany, seems fair.
Bloomberg said an announcement may come at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit in January.
Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in June that Tesla plans to make a “significant investment” in India and he intends to visit in 2024.
Commerce minister Piyush Goyal had visited Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California, a week before last and said last month that Tesla is planning to almost double purchases of auto parts from India to $1.9 billion this year.
Speaking of doubling, the company that is there on ground, Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp which has been in India for over 25 years has said it will invest Rs Rs3 300 crore to build its third manufacturing facility in India, also to gear up for clean technology cars, the ET reported.
This unit will take up Toyota’s annual output to 342,000 vehicles, company officials said.
The expansion will boost Toyota’s total investment in the country to Rs19,300 crore, senior executives at Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) said at an event at its facility at Bidadi, near Bengaluru.
TKM signed a memorandum of understanding with the Karnataka government on Tuesday on the fresh investment to set up the 100,000-unit-a-year capacity factory. The new plant will be built within its existing facility at Bidadi and offer direct employment to 2,000 people, the executives said.
This is the first major expansion in the Indian market by Toyota, in about 15 years.
The expansion plans come at a time when wait lists for most of its brands are still running into several months.
Models like the Urban Cruiser Hyryder, Innova Crysta and some of the imported models also have waiting periods of three to six months amid a clear shift in demand for SUVs, the ET said.
These and other launches have swung Toyota into a stronger position in the Indian market.
The new plant is set to go on stream only in 2026 which means wait lists are unlikely to clear very soon.
Amazon Target Exports Worth $20 Billion
Amazon has said it is targeting merchandise exports worth $20 billion from India by 2025 by adding thousands of small sellers to its e-commerce platform.
There was huge demand for "Made in India" organic health supplements, homeware like bath towels, jute rugs, and robotic games for children ahead of the Black Friday Cyber Monday sale, an 11-day shopping period from Friday, an Amazon official told Reuters.
Launched in 2015 with a handful of sellers, Amazon Global Trade, the business to consumers (B2C) exports platform of the e-commerce giant, is gaining traction in India.
The company has added more than 100,000 small manufacturers to sell a wide range of products to overseas customers, he said.
"Some of the sellers are first time exporters, including those who left their corporate jobs to start e-commerce exports," he said.
Interestingly, Amazon’s claimed growth comes against the decline in India’s exports, 7% year-on-year during the first seven months of this year.
I am trying to find the separation between merchandise exports in bulk through traditional routes and to what extent the same products are being picked up through the retail, ecommerce route.
On the e-commerce platform, the highest growth was seen in categories like beauty, apparels, home, kitchen, furniture, and toys.
Interestingly, holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year were driving sales of Indian products in markets such as the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and Germany.
So what is the overall scope for Indian exports via ecommerce looking like. Amazon’s figures are undoubtedly aggressive but like I said I have not been able to source more precise figures on what the bump up in exports via e-commerce is and is likely to be. But I did put that question to Dr Ajay Sahai, director general of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations which houses some 36,000 exporting organisations and asked him how he was seeing ecommerce sales pick up.
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The Bay Area Drama
OpenAI which owns ChatGPT has said it’s in “intense discussions' ' to unify the company after most employees threatened to quit if Sam Altman doesn’t return as chief executive officer.
To recap, Sam Altman was ousted suddenly by the board of OpenAI and his interim replacement was former Twitch chief Emmett Shear.
There is of course now the prospect of Sam Altman who was hired quickly by Microsoft to head an AI team, returning to the fold. And of course since he has evidently signed on the dotted line with Microsoft, it would be interesting to see how that goes.
Except that Microsoft, read Satya Nadella, seems okay to let him do so since Microsoft is already OpenAI’s largest shareholder and the technology is already plugged in, so to speak.
So Microsoft is happy either way, or so we are told.
The larger question of course is what does all of this, even as it is today, mean for AI and AI development whether it is sitting in Microsoft or outside.
I reached out to Jaspreet Bindra, founder of Tech Whisperer Ltd and consultant and speaker on AI implementation in enterprises.
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Ozempic Drug ETF
If you have been following the hype around weight-loss drugs in the US, this takes it to the frenzy level.
A niche issuer is launching a biotechnology exchange-traded fund whose key holdings include firms benefiting from precisely the hype around weight-loss drugs.
The Tema Cardiovascular and Metabolic ETF (ticker HRTS) tracks companies involved in the treatment of cardio-metabolic diseases — a term that links cardiovascular diseases, obesity and diabetes.
The actively managed fund has 20 to 25 core positions, including Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S, as well as Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Bridgebio Pharma Inc., Maurits Pot, founder and chief executive officer of Tema ETFs told Bloomberg.
Novo’s Ozempic was originally used to treat diabetes and all their stock prices are up.
Incidentally, these drugs, as I hear, are also available in India, particularly Ozempic. If you do get hold of them, please do take it with advice from a medical practitioner is all I can say.
And Satellite Internet Comes To India
OneWeb India on Tuesday obtained the necessary authorisations from IN-SPACe to launch Eutelsat OneWeb’s commercial satellite broadband services in India.
OneWeb India is the first organisation to receive this authorisation. Eutelsat OneWeb, the low Earth orbit (LEO) operator, is part of Eutelsat Group.
IN-SPACe is the agency of the Government of India responsible for regulating space activities and granting authorisation for conducting space activities in the country. This authorisation means Eutelsat OneWeb can launch commercial connectivity services as soon as spectrum allocation is granted by the government.
“Eutelsat OneWeb is ready to deploy as soon as it receives the final spectrum authorisation to launch commercial services,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bharti Group chairman and vice-president (co-Chair) of the board of directors of Eutelsat Group.
