The stocks of the Tata Group companies have been shining since January 1. The trend became significant recently due to heavy institutional buying. This was supported by the announcement of a major investment plan of the Group. 

A study of market capitalisation (M-cap) of 33 major Tata Group stocks during January 1-December 19, 2003, shows investors’ interest in these scrips was gaining during the period. 

The aggregate M-cap of the 33 companies of the Group increased by 134.56 per cent or Rs 32,162 crore to Rs 56,063 crore on December 19, 2003 from the level of Rs 23,901 crore on January 1. 

The Group companies which showed significant rise include Tinplate Company, Tata Sponge Iron, Tata Metaliks, Tata Investment, Tata Motors, Voltas, Tisco, Tata Power and Tata Chemicals. 

Significant increase was seen in the case of Tinplate Company, whose market capital increased by 481.48 per cent to Rs 158.86 crore on December 19 from Rs 27.32 crore on January 1. 

The net profit of the company increased from Rs 0.13 crore during July-September 2002 to Rs 8.64 crore during July-September 2003. 

Sales also increased by 37.34 per cent during the same period. Tata Motors too showed a significant increase in M-cap of 167.66 per cent to Rs 13,946 crore from Rs 5,210 crore. The second quarter performance of the company can be cited as the reason for the increase. 

The net profit of Tata Motors increased by 251.50 per cent to Rs 206.68 crore during July-September 2003 from the level of Rs 58.80 crore during July-September 2002. Sales also increased by 46.22 per cent during the same period. 

Here 33 Tata Group stocks have been considered for M-cap study during January 1 and December 19 period. The closing share prices have been computed from the official price lists published by The Stock Exchange, Mumbai (BSE). 

Among others, positive changes of less than 50 per cent in M-cap was seen in the case of VSNL (30.82 per cent), Tata Honeywell (29.46 per cent), CMC (38.31 per cent) and Tata Elxsi (15.39 per cent). 

One interesting thing is that all the Tata Group companies M-cap showed positive changes during the study period. 

The top five in terms of M-cap in a descending order on December 19 are Tisco (Rs 14,603 crore), Tata Motors (Rs 13,946 crore), Tata Power (Rs 5,633 crore), VSNL (Rs 3,702 crore) and Tata Tele (Maharashtra) (Rs 2,768 crore). Of these, the highest increase was witnessed in Tata Tele (Maharashtra) (220.32 per cent). 

The ratio of the M-cap to equity capital of the 33 Tata Group companies increased from 660.16 per cent on January 1 to 1548.46 per cent on December 19.