Top market and economy voices on spectrum auction, home loan rates, stock market, and more

SUMMARY

Here is what market gurus and industry captains said about the near-term trajectory on March 3, 2021.

By CNBCTV18.comMar 3, 2021 5:31:00 PM IST (Published)

On Indian Spectrum Auction | Sweta Patodia, Analyst, Corporate Finance Group, Moody’s Investors Service: Indian telcos’ spectrum acquisition can be accommodated in their current ratings, particularly amid the stabilizing competitive environment. Some have recently raised funds while others have large cash holdings to support the acquisitions. The spectrum renewals will help incumbents protect their market positions while additional bandwidth purchases will drive improved network coverage.

On Home Loan Rates | Keki Mistry, VC and CEO, HDFC: My sense is that home loan rates will bottom out by the end of this month. I do not see much downsides for rates going forward but over the last 8-9 months interest rates have been coming down. However, demand for housing loans has been extremely strong. I don’t want to talk of anything which is not in the public domain, but in the quarter of October-November-December, our individual loan disbursements were higher by as much as 26 percent compared October-November-December of last year (2019). Catch the conversationhere.

On Jio's bid in spectrum auction | Tarun Lakhotia, Director, Kotak Institutional Equities: Jio always had a capacity advantage, which has worked well for them. In the last year or two, some of the data suggested that user experience in Jio was lagging behind Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea in quite a few circles, so they needed to address the capacity constraints given the higher utilisation or throughput that they were able to achieve in their network. In that regard, the bidding – while it may seem aggressive – the idea for Jio would be to rebuild the capacity advantage to again be able to offer data services, to a larger base of customers. Their recent initiative suggests they are targeting a larger market, potential 300 million of 2G subscribers, so all of them fall in sync with what final Jio’s numbers are in terms of spectrum acquisition and the outlay that they have. Catch the conversationhere.

On Home Loan Rates | Ambuj Chandna, President-Consumer Assets, Kotak Mahindra Bank: Home loan rates are at a 15-year low. We see quite a few trends in the housing market. We see a reasonable pick-up in the core housing sales market in the last quarter and this quarter driven largely by work-from-home, need for larger houses, the fact that interest rates are one of the lowest, governments trying their best – we see the stamp duty impact coming in Maharashtra, all this combined we see a reasonable lift in the housing market. We want to participate in this housing rally, we want to grow our business, one needs to pass the value to consumers and offer them a rate, which allows them to get into the dream houses that they have been wanting to do. So that is our paradigm and within which we decided to drop our rates at 6.65 percent. Catch the conversationhere.

On Haryana's Job Reservation Policy | Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-Founder & Executive VP of TeamLease: I think it completely goes against the fundamental or the basic principle of meritocracy that are followed by organisations and employers when it comes to hiring the best talent. I think such a kind of protectionism can actually in the long run scare away employers. At the end that would cost jobs for a state as well. Catch the conversationhere.

On Stock Market | Taher Badshah, CIO- Equities at Invesco Mutual Fund: Investors are switching from growth to value stocks. The move that started as a rotation from growth to value towards the end of last year has gained a bit of momentum given the fact that global yields have gone up in the recent past. Therefore, that part of the trade is still active and we see an acceleration of value or economy facing stocks doing well. Catch the conversationhere.