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Mumbai: Even as diplomatic tensions between Canada and India are escalating, Canadian funds holding domestic equities valued at about ₹1.98 lakh crore as of September 30 are not rushing to the exit door. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the largest Canadian investor in India, has been trimming its stakes in Indian stocks over the past year, while other funds Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec (CDPQ) and British Columbia Investment Management have kept their holdings in the country unchanged.CPPIB, which held listed equities worth ₹45,000 crore ($5.46 billion) as of March 31, has sold shares worth ₹8,500 crore ($1 billion) so far in FY25.The selling by some of these funds could have more to do with the rich share valuations of Indian stocks or reshuffling of their underperforming holdings than on account of diplomatic friction between the two countries, said analysts.114297340"Foreign funds like CPPIB will continue to invest and stay invested in India unless diplomatic relations between the two countries completely break down and their governments take drastic measures, which seems unlikely at this point," said VK Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist, Geojit Financial Services.CPPIB held more than 1% stake in five listed Indian companies as of June 2024. Several companies are yet to disclose their latest shareholding patterns.The fund's largest investment in India was in Kotak Mahindra Bank in which it held a 2.68% stake in the bank as of March 2024. In June it sold about 3.3 crore shares or 1.6% stake through open market transactions for ₹6,123 crores. In July, CPPIB sold a 0.52% stake in Nykaa for ₹256 crore and a 3.18% stake in Delhivery for ₹910 crore. Earlier in February CPPIB sold a 2% stake in the telecom tower infrastructure services provider Indus Tower for ₹1,223 crore."Considering India's status as the world's fastest-growing economy, Canadian funds are unlikely to sell their stakes in a hurry unless tensions escalate and the government enacts policies against investing in India," said U R Bhat, co-founder of Alphaniti. "Most of these funds are pension funds and long-term investors, so they are unlikely to change their investment strategies based on short-term events."CPPIB held a stake in nearly 139 stocks as of March 31, 2024, worth $5.46 billion, according to Refinitiv data. They held 11.61 million shares in Reliance Industries worth $414 million as of March 31, 2024, while their other large investment includes 21.58 million shares in Infosys, 149 million shares in Zomato, 6.11 million shares in Tata Consultancy Services.

Mumbai: Subscribing to large initial public offerings (IPOs) and holding them forever may not be a sure-shot way to make strong returns from these issues.Out of the country's 30 largest IPOs with issue sizes between ₹4,000 crore and ₹20,000 crore so far, 18 have lagged the performance of the Nifty 500 index, according to a study by Capitalmind Financial Services.The returns on the stock were calculated based on an investor buying in the IPO and holding them. Total returns include the dividends reinvested into the stock.According to the Capitalmind study, the largest ones have been least lucrative for investors who subscribed to the IPOs. Eight of the top 30 IPOs continue to make losses, including Reliance Power, which has fallen 84% since the listing date. The smaller IPOs in the list have tended to beat their benchmarks,"Since most big-ticket IPOs are valued higher relative to earnings, there is pressure to deliver on earnings growth in the medium-term post the IPO," said Anoop Vijaykumar, head of research at Capitalmind Financial Services.114297314Vijaykumar said usually, the big IPOs come in at a later stage of around 18 to 24 months into the bull market when investors have a reasonable appetite for equities and high expectations from the IPOs and suck up the liquidity. "If, and when the tide turns, the impact is larger too," he said.Coal India and Zomato are among the ones that have outperformed the Nifty 500 Index.Hindustan Aeronautics, Indian Railway Finance Corp, Sona BLW Precision Forgings and ICICI Lombard were among the other companies that beat the index.Five of the top 10 IPOs ranked by returns, including Bajaj Housing Finance, Bharti Hexacom, and Brainbees (FirstCry), were launched in the past two years.

New Delhi: Vodafone Idea (Vi), boosted by equity funding, is set to start rolling out next generation (5G) commercial services by March 2025 across 17 circles, starting with Delhi and Mumbai, and is aiming to reach at least 90% of India's population with 4G coverage by June next year, said its chief technology officer Jagbir Singh."We are going a little slow (wih 5G), but we will be doing 5G in Delhi and Mumbai first, and of course, all metros and major cities across 17 states (circles)," he told ET.Vi, as part of a revival plan, has raised equity funding of ₹24,000 crore including ₹18,000 crore from a follow-on public offer. The telecom operator has said that the bulk of the funds will be used to beef up 4G coverage and roll out 5G as it strives to become more competitive against rivals Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel and stop the decline in the number of subscribers."Today, nearly 1.03 billion people are covered with around 77% of 4G coverage. As of now, we want to go from this 77% to at least 90%," Singh said, adding that the telecom operator would be able to achieve the target by June next year.He expects the telco to arrest subscriber losses within a quarter of network completion. 114293425Vi is a late 5G entrant due to its financial woes. Rivals Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel had commercially launched 5G services in October 2022.Further, Singh said, the joint venture between the UK’s Vodafone Group Plc and India’s Aditya Birla Group would continue to focus on 17 licensed areas or telecom circles for both 4G and 5G coverage, including roaming customers.The telco's focus, he said, would be the deployment and expansion of 4G to improve the quality of the network and provide more capacity, as well as leverage all the spectrum in order to meet growing capacity.The telco has spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2500 MHz bands.“In the 900 MHz band we had only 55,000 sites. Now we are going to 150,000 sites, out of which 50,000 are already done, crossing 100,000 sites. Another 50,000 sites will be done by the next nine months,” Singh said.Radio waves in the 900 MHz band, he said, is the “topmost focus” for the telecom carrier since it offers better coverage in cities, including indoors.He said that there are no hurdles in execution of the project and that all tower companies including Indus Towers, ATC and Tower Vision, have accepted Vi’s requirements till March.“Everybody is working to make the towers available from the first or second week of November, so we can start all out. So, I see no challenge in terms of execution of the project,” he said.He did not comment on clearance of previous dues to tower companies such as Indus Towers.The telco will not renew expiring network contracts with Chinese-origin vendors, he said."When we floated a request for proposals (RFP), it included these Chinese equipment swap plans, if not immediately, but at least keeping in mind some equipment will come to end of life, end of support, so we will replace them. But do we have the plan within, like two years, to replace everything? Answer is no,” Singh said.Banking on virtualised radio access network (vRAN), Vi has been engaged by South Korean firm Samsung in Karnataka, Bihar and Punjab circles.The telco, however, said that its tryst with openRAN has not been encouraging so far.Following its partnership with US-based Mavenir, the telco deployed open network in 25 sites in Jalandhar.“This was given (to Mavenir) around a year back, for 4G and 5G both. So, we had done the deployment, and initially we had a lot of hiccups. There is no doubt about it – the maturity of openRAN is still not there. In fact, TCO (total cost of ownership) is more expensive rather than being cheaper (than classical RAN),” Singh said, adding that Vi does not expect large commercial deployments soon.He also said that private 5G networks for enterprise deployments have not kicked off globally. “And the reason could be that there is no business case. We have done trials for one or two customers. But we don’t actually see a strong use-case for that company or the enterprise that they are able to justify the cost,” he said.On the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in telecom, Vi has had initial conversations with tech service providers including IBM, Accenture, Microsoft and Google to replicate use cases such as network planning, operations, automations and service quality, Singh said.Vi does not see satellite communication as competition to terrestrial networks but rather a “complement by reaching rural and disaster prone areas and expanding connectivity”, he said.In February last year, the Indian government converted debt-ridden Vi’s dues into equity, taking nearly 33.5% stake in the company, becoming the single largest stakeholder.