Telecom stocks mixed
IDEAL STOCK
July 20, 2018
Telecom stocks were trading mixed during afternoon trade on Thursday.
Shares of Bharti Infratel (down 4.86 per cent), Aksh Optifibre (down 3.89 per cent), GTL Infrastructure (down 3.79 per cent), Sterlite Technologies (down 3.54 per cent) and GTL (down 3.04 per cent) were the top losers among the telecom stocks. 
Himachal Futuristic Communications (down 2.86 per cent), ITI (down 2.54 per cent), Reliance Communications (down 2.37 per cent), Vindhya Telelinks (down 1.84 per cent), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (down 1.67 per cent) and OnMobile Global (down 0.24 per cent) were also among the losers in the telecom pack.
However, Bharti Airtel (up 2.39 per cent), Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (up 1.24 per cent), Idea Cellular (up 0.50 per cent), Tata Communications (up 0.44 per cent), Tejas Networks (up 0.32 per cent) and GTPL Hathway (up 0.31 per cent) were in the green in the index.
Bharti Airtel is in talks with Warburg Pincus to raise as much as $1.5 billion by divesting up to 15 per cent in its holding company for African operations, Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV (BAIN BV), two people familiar with the matter told ET. This will be followed by a listing that will help the company repay some of its debt and fend off competition in the Indian market.
Losses in Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC, Larsen & Toubro, TCS and ICICI Bank were weighing on key equity indices.
Benchmark BSE Sensex was 38 points down at 36,335, while the NSE Nifty50 index was down 29 points at 10,951.
Among the 50 stocks in the Nifty index, 21 were trading in the green, while 29 were in the red.
In the Sensex index, 18 stocks were advancing, while 13 were declining.
Kotak Mahindra Bank, falling over 4 per cent, was leading among the Sensex losers even as the bank on Thursday reported a 12 per cent year-on-year growth in standalone net profit at Rs 1,025 crore for the June quarter, aided by better asset quality.
