Leading ICE companies lose over Rs 66,000 crore in M-cap

Mumbai: Leading information technology, communications and entertainment (ICE) companies have lost over Rs 66,000 crore in market capitalisation (M-cap) during the last two years. Even in the recent Bull Run, which took the Sensex above 3900 this week, these segments have been bypassed by old economy stocks like Reliance and ONGC.

According to the data released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, IT companies such as Wipro, Infosys, HCL and NIIT lost around Rs 30,000 crore in M-cap since 8 March 2001. The upward movements in the Sensex to 3900 was mainly due to gains in old economy majors like ONGC with an M-cap of over Rs 75,000 crore and Reliance with over Rs 50,000 crore.

In contrast, the IT, communication and entertainment companies eroded almost 50 per cent of their market capitalisation from Rs 1,35,740 crore when the Sensex was at its previous high in the first week of March 2001, to Rs 69,243 crore in the week ended 8 August 2003 when the Bombay Stock Exchange index touched a new high, according to the CIME data. It added that the M-cap of most of the Ketan Parekh stocks eroded by 80 per cent.

The meltdown was reflected from the M-cap of Wipro, Infosys, HCL, NIIT, HFCL, Sterlite Optical, Hughes Software, SSI Ltd, Silverline Technologies and Satyam Computers.

In the last 28 months Wipro's M-cap reduced by Rs 29,234 crore (57 per cent) to end last week with Rs 22,351 crore, while Infosys lost Rs 10,268 crore (30.4 per cent) of its value to finish at Rs 23,563 crore.

The other companies that witnessed severe erosion in their M-cap include Visualsoft Technologies, Global Tele, Digital Globalsoft, Polaris, Pentamedia Graphics, Mascon Global, Shyam Telecom, Rolta India, Aztec Software, Cyberspace and Shree Rama Multitech.

The M-cap of HCL eroded by 62 per cent to Rs 5,146 crore while that of NIIT was down by 88 per cent to Rs 471 crore. In the telecom sector, HFCL witnessed further erosion in M-cap by 75 per cent to Rs 780 crore while Sterlite Opticals shed 86 per cent to Rs 325 crore in 29 months.

Media major Zee Telefilms lost marginally by 11 per cent with an M-cap of Rs 4,752 crore while Soundcraft Industries shed 84 per cent to Rs 127 crore. Hughes Software shed 57.4 per cent to end last week with an M-cap of Rs 991 crore while SSI lost 89 per cent to end with Rs 129 crore.

Other companies like Satyam Computers, Silverline and DSQ Software lost over Rs 700 crore during the last 29 months.