By Bharath Rajeswaran
BENGALURU (Reuters) -Indian shares fell on Tuesday, dragged by a pullback in high-weightage IT stocks after a recent rally, while investors awaited the results of top private lender HDFC Bank.
The blue-chip NSE Nifty 50 shed 0.29% to 22,032.30 points, while the S&P BSE Sensex lost 0.27% to 73,128.77.
Both the benchmarks rose about 0.1% each to fresh record highs for the third session in a row, before reversing gains.
IT stocks shed 1.28%, after jumping 7.1% in the last two sessions on the back of better-than-expected results from the top four software companies.
HCLTech, Wipro and Infosys were among the top five Nifty 50 losers, dropping between 1.2% and 2.5%.
Markets will be guided predominantly by earnings over the next few sessions as several key constituents are scheduled to report their results, said Gaurav Dua, senior vice president and head of capital market strategy at Sharekhan.
Eight Nifty 50 companies, with a combined weightage of more than 30%, are due to report their quarterly earnings this week.
Financials were muted, ahead of results from the highest-weighted Nifty 50 stock – HDFC Bank – due after closing bell. Eight of the 13 major sectors logged losses.
Among individual stocks, National Aluminium Company and Hindustan Copper climbed 2.66% and 3.89%, respectively, after a state-owned joint venture KABIL signed an agreement with Argentina’s CAMYEN SE for lithium exploration and mining.
The two were among the top gainers in metals, which rose about 1%.
Paytm-parent One 97 Communications jumped 4.64%. UBS initiated coverage with a “buy” rating, saying it expects the digital payments firm to reach EBITDA break-even in fiscal 2025 and that the regulatory issues on consumer lending have “passed”.
Hospital chain Aster DM Healthcare surged 6.23% and hit a record high after announcing plans to consider a dividend of 110 rupees-120 rupees per share from its Gulf business demerger.
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen Soreng, Janane Venkatraman and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
