ITC, Adani Power, Cipla among large caps bought by FIIs last quarter

Indian stock indices have seen bulls again take control of the steering wheel from the bears, who had pushed the market to correct almost 15% from the recent peak. The bounce-back of the last few weeks has taken the top indices just 5% shy of the all-time high level.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs), or foreign institutional investors (FIIs), had become more cautious about investing in India over the last one year. In fact, in the October-December 2021 quarter, they were net sellers in Indian equities and pulled out over $5.1 billion in the process.

In the first six months of this year, they made their bearish sentiments apparent with net sales of securities worth over $25 billion on the equities side alone. In June itself they were net sellers in the equities worth over $6 billion.

But it was not a one-way show.

We scanned through the list of companies that have disclosed their shareholding patterns to find companies where FIIs took a bullish stance and actually increased their holding in the quarter ended June 30.

In particular, they increased their stake in 68 companies that have a valuation of $1 billion or more last quarter. In comparison, they had bought additional stake in 60 companies that have a valuation of $1 billion or more in the previous quarter ended March 31.

These numbers were still higher than the 41 such companies in which they lifted their stake during the quarter ended December 31, 2021.

On the flip side, they had been more bullish on these companies having bought additional shares of 89 such firms in the three months ended September 30 and 83 such companies in the quarter ended June 30, 2021.

Of these 68 companies in which FIIs increased their stake, 39 companies were large caps. FIIs were bullish on selective FMCG counters besides several pharma, automobile, second tier banks and oil & gas stocks.

Top large caps that saw FII buying

If we look at the pack of large caps with a market valuation of Rs 20,000 crore ($2.6 billion) or more, then FPIs pushed up their stake in ITC, Sun Pharmaceutical, ONGC, Power Grid, M&M, Adani Power, Bajaj Auto, Eicher Motors, Cipla, Dr Reddy's Labs, GAIL, Cholamandalam Investment, UPL, Bosch and Balkrishna Industries.

ITC, Sun Pharma, ONGC, Power Grid, Adani Power, Bajaj Auto, UPL, Cipla, JSPL and Yes Bank were stocks where they have now upped stake for two straight quarters.

Although FIIs restricted their additional stake purchase to under 2%, some counters where they bought 1% or more stake include Ashok Leyland, APL Apollo Tubes, Adani Power, UPL, Cipla, JSPL and Coromandel International.

In the previous quarter they had bought 2% or more additional stake in as many as 17 companies including names like ITC, Indus Towers, Cipla and Yes Bank.