Tag: CNBC-TV18

CNBC-TV18 dominates Budget Day with all-India viewership of 75.1%

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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CNBC-TV18, India’s leading Business news channel, over the years has consistently earned the reputation of being the go-to destination for the fastest, most accurate and comprehensive coverage of Union Budget. Having dominated the business news genre for two decades, this year the channel beat all English general news channels on Budget day by garnering maximum viewership of 468 (Imp’000)*.

The combined viewership of the 8 general news channels including Times Now, CNN-News18, Republic, India Today TV, and others was a mere 421,000 impressions. Its viewership that say was almost four and a half times the viewership of Times Now and almost double of Times Now and Republic combined.

The day where the eyes and ears of the Indian citizen are hooked onto their screens, CNBC-TV18 left no stone unturned in delivering top-quality content via its extensive, exclusive and unmatched coverage. Almost 4 out of every 5 English Business news viewers on Budget day was watching CNBC-TV18.

Speaking on the ratings, Basant Dhawan CEO – English & Business News Cluster, Network18, said “Union Budget is the most important event for our channel and our viewers. We strive to deliver unmatched coverage, analysis, and opinions to our viewers and have maintained this tradition for two decades now. What we have achieved this Budget, with regards to viewership figures is remarkable and one to be proud of. Not only are we a leader in just business news space, but our viewership on budget day is higher than the combined viewership of all English general news channels.”

It was the first full year Union Budget presented by the country’s very first female finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1. With the day being of immense importance to the country’s economic future, CNBC-TV18 provided content and information via an integrated newsroom comprising CNBC-TV18, CNBC Awaaz, CNBC Bajar and www.cnbctv18.com with utmost authenticity and perspective from market experts ensuring that the investor is kept abreast of the day’s events. The Finance Minister’s very first interview to CNBC-TV18 saw a remarkable share of 100%.

*Source: BARC India | TG: NCCS AB Male 22yrs+ | Market: India | Period: Wk 05’20 (Saturday, 0600-2400 Hrs), Imp’000 | 10 English News Channels considered)

**Source: BARC India | TG: NCCS AB Male 22yrs+ | Market: India | Period: Wk 05’20 (Saturday, 0600-2400 Hrs), Imp’000 | 8 English General News Channels considered)

***Source: BARC India | TG: 22+ AB Males Market: India Period: 1st Feb, 2020 (18:00-18:30)

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Fall in household savings not a worry as of now, says former chief statician Pronab Sen

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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India’s net household financial savings growth rate has fallen to the lowest in eight years at 6.5 percent according to the latest data released by the National Statistics Office (NSO).

The data states gross savings have dropped in absolute terms from 20 trillion in FY18 to 19.9 trillion in FY19. CNBC-TV18’s Latha Venkatesh explains the numbers and later former chief statistician Dr Pronab Sen shared his views on the same.

India’s total household savings have fallen in aggregate terms from 20 trillion in FY18 to 19.9 trillion. From the gross, if you deduct household liability – that is loans taken by households – you get net savings and that has dropped to 6.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). When the new base year started, our percentage of household savings to GDP used to be at 9 percent and before that 11 percent but then the methodology changes and we were at 9. Now we have dropped to 6.5 percent, so that is a little worrisome.

Net savings have dropped because gross has dropped. It has also fallen because households are taking more loans. The liabilities or loans could have grown because of MUDRA and because banks are pushing a lot of retail credit. Now because corporates are not borrowing, there is a lot of retail credit borrowing and that is another reason why you are seeing a lot of fall in net household savings.

There are also methodology issues in this. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) used to publish both savings and investment data and NSO also used to publish – the two numbers didn’t match because NSO was not including enough of mutual fund (MF) and insurance data. Now the two institutions have got together and cleaned up the data. So, there is no disputing this data that our net household savings has genuinely fallen.

Dr Sen said “You have to keep in mind that 2017-2018 was a very unusual year, the post-demonetisation year. In that year, the gross savings went up because all of us simply transferred our tax reserves into the banking system. If you look at the data – what you find is in 2017-2018, the gross savings of households went up by more than Rs 4 lakh crore, while the trend was of Rs 1-1.5 lakh crore So there was a huge bump up, almost four times bump up in 2017-2018. Some of that has corrected. So, if you look at the trend, in fact we are above trend as of now,” Pronab Sen said.

“As far as household savings are concerned they have not fallen. What has fallen is corporate savings are down and government savings are down. So far as households are concerned, if you leave out 2017-2018 – which was an unusual year – there has been no fall in savings. The real issue is that household sector which includes unincorporated businesses are borrowing more, which is a good thing. So, I wouldn’t worry too much about it as of now,” he added.

When asked if the new tax regime would have any impact on the savings rate, he further mentioned, “If you look at what is happening to the savings behaviour of households, small savings weren’t doing very much until the banking crisis erupted and then suddenly small savings took a spurt. In the last couple of year’s small savings have gone up by over 20 percent a year. What it means in effect is that the large corpus in small savings is essentially a result of lack of confidence in the banking sector or in the MF sector.”

“Whether the change in income tax rate is going to lead to a shift in behaviour is very difficult to say because we really don’t know what is driving it. I don’t think we need to worry too much about the savings at the moment because in India most household savings are not that sensitive to interest rates. What they are sensitive to is people’s expectations about the future.”

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Budget 2020: Rajiv Bajaj recommends 3 steps to revive growth in auto industry

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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With just over a week to go for the union budget, various industry, corporates and other experts have voiced their expectations in their interviews with CNBC-TV18.

Rajiv Bajaj, MD, Bajaj Auto said if the auto industry has to be put back on 15 percent growth track then the government would need to do three simple things. “First, this mandatory insurance that was brought into play in September 2018, should be rolled back. Second, imposing anti-lock braking system (ABS) on 150 CC or 200 CC scooters or motorcycles was a complete overkill and I would urge the government to consider recalibrating this to at least for 250 CC plus two-wheelers. Third, at a time when goods and services tax (GST) for electric vehicles (EVs) has been correctly lowered to 5 percent, we should consider lowering GST for petrol or diesel vehicles from 28 to 18 percent.”

However, if this is not done,  then I  anticipate around 20 percent plus degrowth from March or April once BS-VI prices comes into play, he said.

According to him, we have to do what is doable right now. “My point for the last several months has been that the industry has been systematically done in by overregulation. This overregulation, whether it is of insurance or of safety norms and now BS-VI, has pushed up the cost of two-wheelers ranging from between 20 percent and 30 percent, depending on whether it is the small or a big vehicle. If you are going to have this kind of cost escalation in a 12-18 month period then it is bound to have an impact on volumes,” he said.

Sharing his rationale for why the mandatory insurance should be removed, he said, “We are a big country. People are riding all kinds of two-wheelers, people are living in all kinds of circumstances. If somebody is buying a little vehicle that can do no more than 50 kilometres an hour, and living outside the city, there is no crazy traffic and he doesn’t have to be overly concerned as long as he is wearing a helmet then that choice should be left to him.”

When asked about rural demand growth and whether there signs of recovery, he said, “You will see from the January results of industry – we all talk to each other and we have a feel of where we are headed this month in terms of retail and billing, and I certainly don’t see signs of that. If you look at communications from car makers, from two-wheeler makers, everybody is only communicating the urgency to pre-buy BS-IV, which tells you that retail is not moving and if you talk to dealers across the auto industry, that is what you will largely hear. May be there are some pockets that are doing better but I would not be aware of that.”

In terms of sales, according to him January is slightly better than December because December was impacted by a huge pre-buying in October. January-February would be better. “For sure we are going to continue to see degrowth, manufacturers are also very concerned about the billing of BS-IV etc and how things may pan out because there are two views again. One is that in March, we will have lot of pre-buying of BS-IV and the other view is that we may not. Our view is that we cannot take the chance and I mean that three years back when we moved from BS-III to BS-IV we had to follow our competition that put out discounts ranging from Rs 7,000 to Rs 25,000. We don’t make that kind of money on most of our motorcycles. So, it is better to produce BS-VI, to let go of BS-IV because if you are left with BS-IV inventory with the dealers then between the dealer and manufacturer, you are going to suffer a lot of pain,” he said.

When asked how long it would take for the industry to get back to double-digit growth, he said, “Most of us will be selling only BS-VI vehicles from sometime in March – from middle of March or so at least we would not want to carry BS-IV stock beyond the first week of March etc., and we have planned our production accordingly. If that means we are going to lose some share in March because competition will have heavy discounts on BS-IV vehicles and push up their share for month, we are not playing that game.”

“Having said that, compared to last year – if from April, BS-VI models are going to be 15-20 percent more expensive, definitely we are going to see strong degrowth. Nobody knows if it is going to be 20-25% degrowth but it is going to be very significant,” Bajaj said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Seeing good growth in replacement market; hope scrappage policy comes through, says Apollo Tyres

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Neeraj Kanwar, VC and MD, Apollo Tyres is of the view that auto industry is close to bottoming out. “Last year was very bad, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) were down 40 percent but that is the bottomed out industry and now we can only go up from here,” he said.

“We have seen some recovery in the passenger car side, which is good news. We have seen very good recovery in the tractor side as well but commercial vehicles (CVs) are still down and we don’t know what is going to happen as far as CVs are concerned,” he said in an interview with CNBC-TV18 from the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

On capacity utilisation, he said, “Today we are working at around 75-80 percent capacity. We are selling into a lot of export markets – into south-east Asia, into middle-east. Europe too is doing well and we are winning market share there but not at the cost of margins. They are premium products, so we are not coming down on prices. We have entered OEM markets in Europe, which is adding fuel to the replacement market.”

“Coming into FY21, I feel Europe margins will start going up. I see double digits coming in because our Hungary facility has come on and it is running at 85-90 percent capacity, so the cost of manufacturing has  come down. Therefore, the cost of production is going to help us increase our margins,” said Kanwar.

Talking about the possibility of an import duty hike on tyres in India, he said, “That will be good for us if import duty comes in, we will see less Chinese tyres come in. There is anti-dumping in India for CV tyres, so that will be a good news for India.”

However, the bigger picture that we are looking at from the budget is scrappage policy, which the government has been talking about for the long time. What we are asking them is to reduce the scrappage policy from 20 years to 10 years and that will incentivise the entire country. We are pretty hopeful of that,” he further mentioned.

Talking about their capex plans he said,  our plants are ready, geared up for an upward journey. “Once the positive trend starts and we believe in FY21 the positive trend will start –cars have already started showing a positive trend – that is when Apollo is going to gain market share,” he added.

Giving a growth outlook, he said, “We are looking at a double-digit growth. In replacement, I am happy to say that, we have gained market share because we have brought in a lot of new products into the country especially, in truck and in cars. Farm is also a sector where we are going aggressive in. So I believe that our growth in the replacement market is going to be good.”

“The biggest risk for 2020 would be if the auto industry doesn’t pick up from here, especially the CVs. On the positive side, if the scrappage policy does come in then Apollo is there to gain market share,” he said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

WEF: India needs to focus on innovation, infrastructure & inclusive growth, says Telangana’s IT Minister

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The 50th edition of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is underway in the Swiss mountain town of Davos. This global epicentre of power brings together political and business leaders to discuss global opportunities and challenges.

Some of the leaders like KT Rama Rao, IT Minister of Telangana and Guruprasad Mohapatra, DPIIT Secretary shared their views with CNBC-TV18.

According to Rama Rao, India is one of the most compelling business stories, the world has come to start believing in and the world has come to start looking at it in the right light. “There are few factors that worked well for us –one, this whole engine room population, which is about 40 percent of the youth between the ages 20 and 40 is a huge advantage, which no other country at this point of time possibly can talk about. Two, the way innovation as an ecosystem is emerging in India is also extremely promising. We have had some billion unicorns come up, even in the most unlikeliest of the locations. India has a huge advantage, which both the government in Delhi and our government in Telangana are going to leverage,” said Rama Rao.

Rama Rao further said, there are three things that work from a state perspective – while the larger policy decisions are made in Delhi, the action is in states. “The three things Telangana is focusing on are  ease of doing business,  the cost of doing business has to be lower, and the quality of doing business has to also improve. So these three aspects need to be bundled together. By quality of business, I mean the quality of talent, the quality of human resources, the quality of infrastructure. I am a firm believer in the three ‘I’ mantra, if India wants to propel itself into greatness – innovation,   infrastructure, inclusive growth. These three ‘I’ put together is what is going to help states emerge stronger and obviously the stronger the states, stronger the nation, ” he said, adding that they have been working very closely with DPIIT and their entire team. We are thankful to them for their support but a lot more needs to be done on infrastructure space.

Mohapatra said, “What we are trying in government of India is to firstly ramp up our infrastructure spending and you have heard that honourable Prime Minister’s announcement about that figure and this will obviously go to the states, because the states is where the land is and state is where the action is. Secondly, we are going to further strengthen the start-up ecosystem in the country. We will try to bring more incentives for them, we will ensure that their credit needs are satisfied in reasonably cost effective manner. We are going to give them more research and development (R&D) incentives, more tax incentives, so that startup preoccupation of Government of India as well as states is going to continue and further improve,”

“As far as investment is concerned, we are going to do very strong kind of hand holding with the potential investors who come to India, not only in terms of bringing all the government of India regulatory departments at one place but also to bring states along with. We plan to give the investor all the information online so that if he wants to go to Telangana right from where he is in the world, he will come to know which site is available in Telangana, what are the downward and forward linkages available for that etc. All these things will see investor certainty,” Mohapatra said.

When asked how many states were on board for this plan, Mohapatra said,  “Almost all state governments have come on board and we have had several rounds of meetings and we are planning to further strengthen the investment framework that we have in terms of perfect hand-holding for the potential investors who would like to come to the country, not only Indian but also the foreign investors.”

This is a partnered post. 

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

IIFL Institutional Equities positive on consumer electrical space; expect double-digit growth

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Renu Baid of IIFL Institutional Equities sharing her expectations from the consumer durable space this earnings season said, “We are positive on the consumer electrical space. The underlying growth in that market is fairly strong. So, companies should be reporting double digit growth, comfortably around 15 percent.“

With regards to capital goods space, she said Larsen and Toubro (L&T) has been quite a mix bag of results so far. “On the inflow side, there could be a bit of weakness, which is a reflection of how the end markets have been. The overall order flow from the government sector too has been a bit soft, so after two strong quarters of inflows, we will see them moderating out this quarter,” she said.

“For the core orders, excluding services, we are expecting a strong double digit decline of 25 percent. While Inflows will be a bit challenging for them, we are expecting double digit growth in infra business that is around 13 percent plus. Margins too are expected to start looking northwards now – relatively better than compared to last year,” she further added, in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

Talking about order flows in the transmission and distribution (T&D) equipment space, she said they have improved in the last couple of quarters helped by the green energy orders but compared to last year’s base they would be still be soft, ” she said.

From an earnings perspective or order inflow perspective, for the private sector driven companies like ABB, Siemens, Thermax revenue headwinds will continue, as reflection of orders and the uncertainties that are there on the working capital and the credit offtake. Therefore, companies are expected to be a bit more conservative in terms of revenue execution to ensure that the working capital and the balancesheet are intact,  she said, adding that in another three-four months, recovery would probably kick in.

“In terms of execution, L&T should be doing well. The house is also upbeat on  KEC, the midcap EPC space but Cummins remains their top pick this year,” said Baid.

Broadly, she said we seem to have hit the bottom in terms of domestic power generation and exports for them. We see sequential improvement in terms of business outlook with good valuations,” she said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow