Around 11 am today, Ircon shares were trading at Rs 341.50 after jumping by over 7% and hitting a fresh 52-week high of Rs 344.75 on the NSE. IRFC also scaled a new peak of Rs 215.40, surging by nearly 4% around this time.
Among other gainers were RITES (up 6%), Jupiter Wagons (3%) and Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (1%).
Most railway stocks have had a strong run on the street in the last one year and have delivered multibagger returns. RailTel’s gains in this period has been to the tune of 310% while Ircon is even better at 315%. IRFC has returned over 500% in the said period while RVNL has yielded over 400% in the same period. RITES and IRCTC have given between 96% and 66%.
Among the private ones, Texmaco Rail & Engineering shares have managed returns of 260% while Titagarh Rail Systems counter delivered 226%.With Dalal Street expecting Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to continue with the capex agenda and retain focus on fiscal discipline, PSU stocks from the stable of railways and defence are leading the bull run with up to 77% return in just one month.A pre-Budget rally has taken most of these PSU stocks to fresh all-time high levels even as purists find the valuations to be quite bizarre when compared to their fundamentals. The current leg of the bull run has been largely led by Modi stocks – used to denote scrips related to capex and infrastructure-linked sectors.If the higher than budgeted dividend from the RBI is used for increasing expenditure, capex growth could increase to 21% year-on-year (YoY), according to estimates by Goldman Sachs.
In the Union Budget for FY25 to be presented on July 23, SBI expects capital expenditure which was budgeted at Rs 11.1 lakh crore in the interim Budget to increase to Rs 11.8 lakh crore.
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