Shares of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) tumbled on April 17 as IT sector companies it owns sold off heavily after Infosys, the country’s second-largest IT services company, reported poor fourth-quarter results.
At 11:50 am, L&T was down 2.3% on the BSE to trade at Rs 2,206. L&T owns 68.7% of LTIMindtree and 73.85% of L&T Tech Services. Both stocks fell 8%.
The Nifty IT index fell more than 6% after tech giants Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys reported weak March quarter results. Infosys shares slumped 11%, their biggest drop in three years, to their lowest in over a year, wiping out Rs 70,000 crore in investor fortunes.
Several brokerages have downgraded Infosys after it said sales growth would be just 4% to 7% in the current financial year due to lower client spending and an uncertain demand environment due to US bank failures.
Wipro and TCS fell 3% each, while LTIMindtree lost 8%. Persistent Systems, Coforge, Tech Mahindra, Mphasis and HCL Technologies fell as much as 6%.
The contagion sent the benchmark Sensex and Nifty indexes down 1.2% each. At 11:20 am, the Sensex was down 728 points at 59,702, and the Nifty was down 182 points at 17,645.