Wipro shares declined more than 11 percent over the last two trading sessions, with the stock coming under pressure after the record date for the company's Rs 15,000-crore share buyback programme.
The stock had fixed June 5 as the record date for the buyback. Wipro shares closed 2.91 percent lower on Friday and extended losses on Monday, ending 8.45 percent down at Rs 181.60 per share on the NSE.
According to market analysts, the sharp fall reflects a price adjustment following the buyback record date rather than any deterioration in the company's underlying business fundamentals.Nishchal Jain, Quant Researcher at Share.Market by PhonePe, said the decline was largely driven by short-term investors exiting their positions after becoming eligible for the company's Rs 250 per share buyback offer."The recent 11 percent decline in Wipro over two consecutive trading sessions represents a structural price adjustment rather than a core fundamental breakdown. The stock shed its corporate action premium after the June 5 record date and moved from around Rs 204 to the Rs 183-184 zone," he said.
Jain said the stock has now entered an important support area between Rs 180 and Rs 184, which has historically attracted institutional buying interest. He added that any recovery could face resistance around Rs 195 initially, followed by a stronger hurdle in the Rs 200-205 range.He further said broader factors such as movements in global bond yields and profit-booking across the Nifty IT index may have contributed to recent volatility. However, he noted that developments such as Wipro's expanded enterprise AI partnership with ServiceNow and its acquisition of an 80 per cent stake in Aggne Global support the company's longer-term growth outlook.For investors, Jain said the recent correction has reduced risk levels for long-term positions, provided the stock sustains above the Rs 180 mark on a weekly closing basis.Virat Jagad, Senior Technical Research Analyst at Bonanza, said Wipro is currently trading near a key long-term support zone of Rs 176-180, which has historically acted as a strong demand area."The stock remains below its 20- and 50-month exponential moving averages, indicating a weak medium-term trend, while RSI is hovering near the lower range, reflecting subdued momentum," he said.Jagad cautioned that a decisive break below Rs 176 could trigger fresh selling pressure and drag the stock towards Rs 160 and Rs 145 levels. On the upside, he said any rebound may face resistance in the Rs 205-210 range, followed by Rs 230.
He advised traders to closely track the Rs 176 support level, adding that a breach could lead to further downside pressure in the months ahead.Overall, analysts said the stock is approaching a critical support zone, with its ability to hold above key levels likely to determine the near-term trend.
Source: Network18 Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts are their own and not of us. We advise readers and investors to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
Benchmark index Nifty50 slipped out of its four-session consolidation on June 8, declining 243 points to close at 23,123. After opening with a sharp gap-down of 286 points on the back of weak global cues, the index staged a strong early recovery of nearly 200 points from the day's low. However, momentum faded in the second half amid renewed Middle East tensions, with Nifty giving up most of its intraday gains to close at two-month low.
Analysts suggested trading levels for the benchmark index and said the bias is bearish.
"Technically, Nifty closed near the 61.8% retracement level (23,106) of the entire 2,200-point rally recorded in April 2026. The index continues to trade below all major moving averages, indicating a bearish bias across timeframes. Immediate resistance is placed at 23,300, while a break below 23,070 could intensify downside pressure toward the next support zone of 22,700–22,800," said Nandish Shah - Deputy Vice President, HDFC Securities.Among sectors, almost all the major sectoral indices witnessed profit booking at higher levels, but the realty and metal indices lost the most, shedding over 2.75%."We are of the view that, as long as the market is trading below 23,250/73800, weak sentiment is likely to continue. On the downside, 22,950/73000 would be the immediate support zone. Further downside may also continue, which could drag the market to 22,800/72,500. On the flip side, above 23,250/73800, the pullback move could extend to 23,350–23,400/74,000-74,300. The intraday market texture is volatile and non-directional; hence, level-based trading would be the ideal strategy for day traders," said Shrikant Chouhan, Head Equity Research, Kotak Securities.
The index is trading below its critical moving averages, indicating a weak underlying trend, said analysts."The broader market structure remains weak, with the MACD maintaining a bearish crossover and the RSI trending lower. The index is also trading below its short- and long-term moving averages, indicating a negative bias. On the volatility front, India VIX surged 8% to close around 17. A sustained move above the 18 mark could further elevate market uncertainty and keep volatility high in the coming sessions," said Nilesh Jain, VP- Head of Technical and Derivative research at Centrum Finverse Ltd."A move above and sustained trading beyond 23,125 could trigger a meaningful recovery towards the 23,250–23,300 zone. On the downside, a breach below 23,070 may invalidate the pattern and drag Nifty below the 23,000 mark," said Rupak De, Senior Technical Analyst at LKP Securities.Nifty slipped out of its four-session consolidation on June 8, declining 243 points to close at 23,123. After opening with a sharp gap-down of 286 points on the back of weak global cues, the index staged a strong early recovery of nearly 200 points from the day's low. However, momentum faded in the second half amid renewed Middle East tensions, with Nifty giving up most of its intraday gains to close at two-month low.Analysts suggested trading levels for the benchmark index and said the bias is bearish."Technically, Nifty closed near the 61.8% retracement level (23,106) of the entire 2,200-point rally recorded in April 2026. The index continues to trade below all major moving averages, indicating a bearish bias across timeframes. Immediate resistance is placed at 23,300, while a break below 23,070 could intensify downside pressure toward the next support zone of 22,700–22,800," said Nandish Shah - Deputy Vice President, HDFC Securities.Among sectors, almost all the major sectoral indices witnessed profit booking at higher levels, but the realty and metal indices lost the most, shedding over 2.75%."We are of the view that, as long as the market is trading below 23,250/73800, weak sentiment is likely to continue. On the downside, 22,950/73000 would be the immediate support zone. Further downside may also continue, which could drag the market to 22,800/72,500. On the flip side, above 23,250/73800, the pullback move could extend to 23,350–23,400/74,000-74,300. The intraday market texture is volatile and non-directional; hence, level-based trading would be the ideal strategy for day traders," said Shrikant Chouhan, Head Equity Research, Kotak Securities.The index is trading below its critical moving averages, indicating a weak underlying trend, said analysts."The broader market structure remains weak, with the MACD maintaining a bearish crossover and the RSI trending lower. The index is also trading below its short- and long-term moving averages, indicating a negative bias. On the volatility front, India VIX surged 8% to close around 17. A sustained move above the 18 mark could further elevate market uncertainty and keep volatility high in the coming sessions," said Nilesh Jain, VP- Head of Technical and Derivative research at Centrum Finverse Ltd."A move above and sustained trading beyond 23,125 could trigger a meaningful recovery towards the 23,250–23,300 zone. On the downside, a breach below 23,070 may invalidate the pattern and drag Nifty below the 23,000 mark," said Rupak De, Senior Technical Analyst at LKP Securities."A breach below 23,000 will signal extension of the current decline towards 22,800 and 22,600 levels in the coming sessions. Index has immediate resistance at Monday's high of 23,267, a breach above the same will open upside towards the key resistance area of 23,500-23,550 levels," said Bajaj Broking Research.
The Nifty IT index fell for a fourth consecutive session on Monday as a global selloff in technology and AI-linked shares triggered fresh profit-booking across the sector. The Nifty IT index dropped 1.8 percent to 28,500 in morning trade, taking its cumulative decline to 8.4 percent over four sessions.
The IT index had surged nearly 8 percent in the preceding three-session rally, driven by optimism around artificial intelligence spending and strong earnings from global software companies.
The latest correction comes amid a broader retreat from technology stocks globally after investors rushed to lock in gains in some of the market's biggest AI winners. The NIFTY IT index emerged as one of the worst-performing sectoral indices on Monday, even as the benchmark Nifty 50 fell 1 percent.WIPRO was the biggest casualty among frontline technology stocks, plunging 5.5 percent to Rs 187.4 and emerging as the top loser on the Nifty 50 index. TCS fell 1.9 percent to Rs 2,156.7, while Infosys declined 1.3 percent. HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra also traded lower by about 1 percent each.
The weakness in Indian IT stocks mirrored a sharp selloff across global technology markets. Wall Street suffered a steep decline on Friday, with the Nasdaq falling 4.2 percent in its biggest one-day drop since April 2025. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index recorded its worst single-day decline since March 2020, wiping out more than $1 trillion in market value.Asian technology-heavy markets extended the selloff on Monday. South Korea's Kospi tumbled 5 percent, while Japan's Nikkei dropped nearly 4 percent. Taiwan's benchmark index fell almost 4 percent as investors exited chipmakers and other AI-linked stocks that had led global markets higher in recent months.Two factors appear to have triggered the reversal. First, investors were disappointed by the outlook from semiconductor company Broadcom, prompting concerns that expectations surrounding AI-related spending may have become too optimistic. Second, a stronger-than-expected US jobs report raised fears that the Federal Reserve could maintain a hawkish stance for longer, reducing the appeal of richly valued technology stocks.The selloff marks a sharp shift in sentiment after investors had recently rotated back into software stocks on hopes that AI was creating fresh demand opportunities rather than disrupting existing business models. Strong results and guidance from software companies such as Snowflake, ServiceNow and SAP had helped fuel a rebound in Indian IT shares over the past two weeks.
Nvidia Corp. and SK Hynix Inc. have agreed to partner on designing future generations of memory chips for AI, a win for a South Korean leader vying with Samsung Electronics Co. in a red-hot arena.
The two companies signed a multi-year agreement covering both chip design and manufacturing. Nvidia will help its partner diversify into new arenas, encompassing infrastructure and physical AI as well as memory for Vera Rubin, Nvidia's most powerful accelerator.
The broad tie-up gives SK Hynix a boost as it prepares to expand significantly into the next generation of high-bandwidth memory, known as HBM4. Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang confirmed for the first time last week it's cleared Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron Technology Inc. to supply that product, indispensable for top-end systems.The trio, which dominates the global market for memory, compete fiercely for a slice of that lucrative business. Set for deliveries in the third quarter of this year, Vera Rubin is now in full production, Huang said during the Computex trade show in Taiwan. The new systems are built around clusters of Vera central processing units and Rubin graphics cores, allied with terabytes of HBM4 in each server system.What Bloomberg Intelligence Says
SK Hynix is set to for a strong sales and profit jump on its deal to supply Nvidia with a full lineup of DRAM, high-bandwidth memory and solid-state drives. Nvidia's AI infrastructure technology partnership, announced on June 7, will strengthen SK Hynix's position as a long-term supplier of memory products across multiple AI platforms. Along with HBM for AI training GPUs, SK Hynix is likely to supply more generations of HBM for AI inference systems. Sales of DRAM for CPUs and SSDs used to store inference data are set to grow over the next few years. SK Hynix should remain a lead supplier for AI-oriented PC architecture like Nvidia RTX Spark. Long-term supply agreements make it easier for SK Hynix to expand capacity and gradually increase market share.
- Masahiro Wakasugi and Jake Silverman, analystsSK Hynix's shares slid 10% on Monday, tracking a broader selloff in Asian tech. Stock in the company and its memory sector rivals have skyrocketed over the past year, driven north by surging chip prices. SK Hynix and its peers are racing to supply HBM to Nvidia, which is in turn scrambling to supply the accelerators that hyperscalers such as Meta Platforms Inc. need to train and operate AI services. Memory has emerged as “probably the toughest” bottleneck to resolve for the tech industry, Arm Holdings Plc CEO Rene Haas said last week.“Together, we will co-develop the next generation of memory for AI factories and support the accelerating global expansion of AI infrastructure — from frontier model training to agentic and physical AI,” Huang said in the statement.Huang is pushing a slate of products in coming years, and Asian companies — including South Korean firms — will play a critical role. In Taipei, Nvidia's CEO took the unusual step of hosting a dinner with partners including SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won.Since arriving in Seoul in past days, Huang similarly dined with several high-profile industry names. He called on gaming studios Krafton Inc. and NC Corp., whose endorsement may be key to ensuring widespread adoption of Nvidia's RTX Spark chip — its foray into a PC sphere dominated by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.Nvidia announced a series of tie-ups Monday with big local names other than SK Hynix. The US company will help SK Telecom Co. and Naver Corp. build AI cloud services, and team up with Doosan Group on robotics.
So far in thisSpecial Situation Series, we’ve covered demergers that are at the closing stages.
With Triveni Engineering the scheme was already sanctioned by the NCLT and the two companies were weeks from trading separately. With Inox Green the demerger was already effective – we were just waiting for shares to land in demat accounts.
Astra Microwave is different. Here we are standing at the starting line, not the finish.
On 27 February 2026, Astra’s board gave only an in-principle approval to demerge its Space, Meteorology and Hydrology business into a separate listed company. The draft Scheme of Arrangement has not even been tabled yet. The board meets on 10 June 2026 to consider it.
There is no share-exchange ratio, no record date, no listing date. Just intent.
That is unusual for this series, and it cuts both ways. You get to think about the situation before the market has fully priced it, but you also have far less certainty: ratios, financials of the carved-out entity, and timelines are all still to come.
What is being spun out, though, is genuinely interesting.
Astra has been a quiet supplier to ISRO – Indian Space Research Organisation for roughly 25 years. When ISRO built the RISAT – Radar-Imaging Satellite, Astra supplied close to 90% of the electronics that went into it. That two-decade relationship, plus a meteorology and hydrology franchise built around Doppler weather radars for the India Meteorological Department (IMD), is what management now wants to have its own ticker.
And note the direction of the cut. Astra is keeping the larger, more mature yet fast growing defence parent and spinning out the smaller, potentially faster-growing space, Meteorology & Hydrology arm
Here is why the move makes sense, what shareholders should eventually receive, where things actually stand, and whether there is value on the table, with the honest caveat that with this one we’re a little early on the demerger timeline.
Why demergers create value
When a single company houses two very different businesses, the market struggles to value it properly.
One business is large, mature and cash-generative. The other is small, fast-growing and full of potential upside. Investors who want the growth engine do not want to pay a growth multiple on the whole company, and investors who want the steady compounder do not want to underwrite a speculative new venture.
So the market splits the difference and assigns one blended multiple. Whichever business is the more exciting one tends to get under-recognised, buried inside the larger entity’s numbers.
This is the conglomerate discount, and a demerger is the standard tool for removing it. Separated, each entity attracts its own investors and analysts, gets its own dedicated management and capital allocation, and pursues its own strategy. The discount tends to fade.
The Indian market has produced a steady run of these.
ITC demerged its hotels business in January 2025, a unit that consumed a large share of capital while contributing only a sliver of profit. ITC Hotels listed separately and ITC became a cleaner FMCG play. Reliance demerged from Jio Financial Services in 2023. Raymond and Aditya Birla Fashion both split contrasting businesses into separate tickers in 2025.
This series has its own reference point. Triveni Engineering demerged its steam-turbine division into Triveni Turbine back in 2010-11. The spun-off entity eventually grew into a company worth more than the parent that birthed it. That is the dream outcome demerger investors chase: a small, high-quality business, given its own identity, re-rating over time into something far larger.
The mechanism works best when the two businesses have genuinely contrasting profiles – different growth rates, different capital needs, different investor bases.
Astra fits that test cleanly: a large, established high growth defence-electronics business on one side, and a smaller, still high-growth space and meteorology franchise on the other.
One honest difference up front. With Triveni and Inox Green, the parent was arguably under-loved and the demerger is expected to remove the discount.
Astra is not “under-loved”. It already trades at a rich multiple (more on that later). So this is less a deep-value, ‘unlock the discount’ story and more a scarcity-and-clarity story i.e – Let a rare, listed NewSpace pure-play find its own multiple, and let the parent stand as a clean defence-electronics business.
Different mechanics, same destination.
Why the Astra demerger makes sense
First, who Astra is.
Astra Microwave Products designs and manufactures high-value RF and microwave components, sub-systems and complete systems for defence, space, meteorology and communications.
It is one of the few private Indian players of scale in defence electronics, sitting alongside the likes of Bharat Electronics, Data Patterns and Paras Defence, and it supplies radar, electronic-warfare, telemetry and missile electronics to DRDO, BEL, the armed forces and ISRO.
FY26 was a record year. On a standalone basis, revenue rose 11% to ₹1,156 crore, EBITDA grew 22% to ₹324 crore (a 28.0% margin), and PAT rose 24% to ₹178 crore.
The order book stood at ₹2,141 crore standalone (around ₹2,600 crore consolidated), roughly 1.8x revenue. In December 2025, CRISIL reaffirmed Astra at ‘A’ and revised the outlook to Positive from Stable, a quiet vote of confidence in the cash flows.
The point: the parent is a healthy, profitable, growing defence-electronics company.
This means the demerger is not a rescue operation. It is a focusing exercise.
As for management’s motivation & perspective, here’s what Atim Kabra (Director, Strategy & Business Development) answered to a question about the space opportunity on the Q2 FY26 call:
“Companies are raising money at like $750 million, $800 million valuation with hardly any revenue numbers to their credit. If I extrapolate these numbers, actually, I got close to my current market capitalization. Actually, I have numbers to support that kind of a valuation if I extrapolate space business alone. But forget about that.”
The asset being carved out
Buried inside that defence company is a space and meteorology franchise that has been built patiently over two decades. And it’s starting to grow as well.
The space heritage is real. Astra first partnered ISRO around 25 years ago, supplied close to 90% of the electronics on the RISAT imaging satellite in 2015, and has cumulatively executed over ₹750 crore of ISRO orders.
The weather business is a genuine niche. On the meteorology and hydrology side, Astra makes Doppler weather radars and wind profilers for the India Meteorology Department (it delivered ten X-band DWRs to the IMD in 2021) and has cumulatively executed over ₹330 crore of contracts here – a franchise now riding the government’s ‘Mission Mausam’ push.
The vehicle already exists. Astra has already incorporated Astra Space Technologies Private Limited (ASTPL) as a wholly-owned subsidiary, is recruiting talent, and is building clean rooms for satellite assembly and integration at its Bangalore facility, with the stated aim of launching its own small satellite within two to three years.
In other words, ASTPL is not a shell invented for the scheme. It is an operating, funded effort that the demerger simply formalises and lists.
How big is the space and meteorology business?
This is where the early-stage caveat bites: Astra has not yet published standalone financials for the carved-out entity.
From its disclosures, the space business alone did about ₹110.6 crore of revenue in FY26 with a space order book around ₹187 crore and FY27 order guidance of ₹154 crore.
On the Q4 FY26 call, management put the combined space-and-meteorology contribution at roughly 16% of FY26 revenue, implying something in the region of ₹180–190 crore for the to-be-demerged business, against a defence/radar core that contributes the lion’s share.
Small base, but the right kind of small: high-growth, technology-led, government-and-ISRO-anchored, and exactly the sort of pure-play the market is rewarding generously these days.
The margins still remain a mystery.
Astra discloses no segment margins. Management calls space its highest-margin business, but the demerged entity also carries an equally large meteorology & hydrology book whose margins are undisclosed and likely tender-sensitive, so the carve-out’s true EBITDA margin won’t be known until its first standalone accounts are filed with the scheme
What management says it will unlock
In Managing Director S. Gurunatha Reddy’s words on the Q4 FY26 call: “The objective of this move is to create sharper strategic and operational focus for business segments… enabling dedicated management teams to pursue sector-specific growth opportunities, enhance governance and accountability, simplify the corporate structure, and create clearer investment propositions to shareholders.”
This is no different from the textbook corporate speak we see from most companies undergoing demergers. The underlying is almost always – Unlocking value in either the parent or the spin-off. Unlike in typical cases, Astra’s value unlocking may happen in both entities.
What stays and what goes
What STAYS in Astra Microwave (AMPL)
What GOES to Astra Space Technologies (ASTPL)
Defence & aerospace, exclusively
Space business (~₹110.6 cr FY26 revenue)
Radar, EW, telemetry, missile electronics (~bulk of revenue)
Meteorology & hydrology (DWRs, wind profilers)
JV stakes: Astra Rafael Comsys (ARC), Navictronics
Source: Astra Microwave Q4 FY26 investor presentation & concall (27 May 2026); 27 Feb 2026 press release.
The management hand-off, in context
The leadership change tells you how seriously the company is taking this. Mr. S. Gurunatha Reddy will step down as Managing Director on 30 September 2026, stay on as an Executive Director with the specific charge of overseeing the demerger, and is then expected to join ASTPL as a director effectively going with the business he is carving out.
Dr. M. V. Reddy, currently Joint MD, takes over as MD of AMPL from 1 October 2026.
The growth engine that stays behind
Lest the parent be mistaken for the boring leftover: AMPL is guiding to 15–20% revenue growth in FY27 (₹1,300–1,400 crore), and management has talked about roughly tripling turnover over a 4.5-to-5.5-year horizon, driven by five to six major programs.
Its Astra Rafael Comsys (ARC) JV is expected to cross ₹600 crore of sales in FY27 in additional to the above (₹1,300–1,400 crore), however, since this is a JV – on a consolidated basis only the profit from JV shows up on AMPL’s profit & loss statement.
The bottomline is that both halves of this split are growing, which is precisely why separating them makes sense. It’s so each can be valued on its own terms.
Slow down here, because the honest answer to ‘what are the mechanics?’ is: mostly not decided yet. This is the part where Astra differs most from the earlier pieces in this series.
What shareholders should eventually receive
Astra has said ASTPL will have a mirror shareholding pattern as AMPL. In plain terms, every existing Astra shareholder should receive ASTPL shares in proportion to their AMPL holding, with no cash changing hands. You would end up owning two listed companies instead of one: a pure-play defence parent and a pure-play space-and-meteorology spin-off.
While this implies a 1:1 share-exchange ratio, it hasn’t officially been announced yet.
The Audit Committee is to appoint a Registered Valuer, and the final structure, ratio and terms will be decided by the board only after it receives the valuer’s and consultants’ reports.
Until then, exactly how many ASTPL shares you get per AMPL share is unknown and that ratio matters a great deal for how the value is actually distributed.
The path so far, and what’s left
Milestone
Date
Status
In-principle board approval to demerge
27 Feb 2026
Done
MD transition announced (S.G. Reddy to oversee demerger)
3 Apr 2026
Done
FY26 results; demerger progress confirmed
26 May 2026
Done
Q4 FY26 concall – ‘detailed scheme in a few weeks’
27 May 2026
Done
Board notice to consider draft Scheme of Arrangement
At the very beginning. The single most important near-term event is the 10 June 2026 board meeting, where the draft scheme and, hopefully soon after, the all-important share-exchange ratio starts to take shape.
Everything after that (shareholder and creditor approvals, SEBI and exchange no-objections, NCLT sanction) is the long, procedural tail that typically takes a year-plus. Management’s own target is to complete and list ASTPL by Q1 of FY28, i.e. roughly mid-2027.
The valuation math: is there value?
Disclaimer: what follows is a simple, illustrative if-then exercise to help you think about how the market might value these two businesses once they trade separately. It is emphatically not a target price. And because Astra has not yet disclosed ASTPL’s standalone financials or the share ratio, the numbers here are placeholders built on management-stated segment figures — even more provisional than usual.
Start with where the whole sits today
As of early June 2026, Astra trades around ₹1,420 a share, for a market capitalization of roughly ₹13,500 crore.
On trailing FY26 consolidated earnings of ₹193 crore, that is a trailing P/E in the region of 70x.
The stock is near its all-time high (52-week range roughly ₹851–₹1,433) and has run up sharply through 2026 on the defence and demerger themes.
Astra-Microwave Historical
Source: www.tradinview.com
Read that number carefully, because it reframes the whole thesis. At ~70x trailing earnings, Astra is not a cheap, overlooked conglomerate waiting for a discount to unwind. The market is already paying a full, arguably generous multiple for the blended company.
So, the demerger question is not ‘will a hidden discount close?’ It is: ‘can the parts, valued separately, command at least as much as the whole and does the space arm get re-rated to the premium that scarce, listed NewSpace pure-plays enjoy?’
What pure-plays trade at
This is the crux of the bull case. Indian defence-and-space names trade at multiples that look absurd next to most of the market, and the ‘space’ label sits at the very top of that range.
Listed comparable
What it does
Rough valuation marker (mid-2026)
EV/EBITDA multiples (x)
Aerospace & Defence (industry avg)
Sector benchmark
~44x P/E
47.6x
Astra Microwave (blended, today)
Defence electronics + space/met
~70x P/E
37x
Paras Defence & Space
Optics, EW, space optics
~77x P/E
56x
Data Patterns (India)
Defence electronics subsystems
Premium (30–35% growth)
53.5x
MTAR Technologies
Precision eng. — space/nuclear/defence
Premium (high P/E, high sales multiple)
121x
Source: market data via Screener / public quote sources, late May–early June 2026; multiples are approximate and move daily. For illustration only.
The logic writes itself. A clean, listed company whose entire identity is ‘India’s NewSpace + weather-radar pure-play’, anchored by a 25-year ISRO relationship and a satellite-integration build-out, is precisely the kind of scarce asset that domestic and global investors chase.
There is no shortage of money looking for a way to own the India space story. There is a shortage of clean, listed ways to do it.
That scarcity is the re-rating fuel.
The if-then, sketched (and heavily caveated)
If ASTPL carries roughly ₹180–190 crore of FY26 revenue (the ~16% space-and-met figure) and earns at or above the parent’s ~28% EBITDA margin, the trailing EBITDA base is small – perhaps ₹54 – ₹57 crore.
On trailing EBITDA, even a comparable 30X EBITDA multiple makes ASTPL only 10%+ of Astra’s ₹13,500 crore whole.
But pure-play space and defence-electronics names are never valued on trailing earnings, they are valued on Capability, growth and scarcity.
Paras trades near 77x; the cluster sits well above the ~47x sector average.
If the market eventually affords ASTPL a Paras-like premium on a rapidly scaling earnings base (its own satellite, ISRO constellation orders, Mission Mausam radar demand), the spun-off entity could be worth a multiple of its trailing profit – the question is simply how many years of growth the market is willing to pay for on day one.
The bear case is equally simple. First, the parent is already expensive, so a chunk of any ‘pure-play premium’ may already be embedded in Astra’s 70x.
Second, the carved-out base is genuinely small and lumpy – space and meteorology revenue swings quarter to quarter (space was 19.5% of revenue in Q4 FY26 but ~2–3% in earlier quarters), and order flow depends on ISRO and government cycles.
Third, and most importantly, none of the terms are set: an unfavourable share-exchange ratio, holding-company-style discounts, or a slow NCLT process could all blunt the outcome.
Pulling it together
The case here is not a tidy sum-of-the-parts that screams mispricing on day one. The parent is too richly valued for that.
The case is optionality. You have a healthy, growing defence-electronics business that will emerge as a clean pure-play, plus a free, attached call option on a scarce listed NewSpace asset that the market may eventually value far above its trailing earnings.
What makes Astra worth watching is the timing.
With Triveni and Inox Green, the work was nearly done by the time the story was clear. Here, the scheme has not even been tabled, the share swap ratio isn’t set, we’re at least about 12 months from the actual demerger.
That is more risk and more room to think.
The single most important thing to watch is the 10 June 2026 board meeting and the share-exchange ratio that follows. As management itself frames it, the aim is to ‘create sharper strategic and operational focus’ and unlock value over the medium to long term.
The point of a demerger is rarely that the math works on day one. It is that a focused, scarce business, given its own identity and its own investor base, tends to find a better multiple over time than it ever could while buried inside its parent.
Note: We have relied on company filings (the FY25 Annual Report, quarterly investor presentations and con-call transcripts, the 27 February 2026 demerger press release, and the December 2025 CRISIL rating rationale) and on widely used market-data sources for price and market-cap figures throughout this article. Where a figure is an author calculation built on management-guided or segment numbers, it is marked as such. Because the demerger is at an early, in-principle stage, the share-exchange ratio and the carved-out entity’s standalone financials are not yet available.
Source: FinancialExpress
Disclaimer:
The purpose of this article is only to share interesting charts, data points and thought-provoking opinions. It is NOT a recommendation. If you wish to consider an investment, you are strongly advised to consult your advisor. This article is strictly for educational purposes only.
Disclosure: The writer or his dependents do NOT hold shares in the securities/stocks/bonds discussed in this article. the articles and the interpretation of data are solely the personal views of the contributors/writers/authors. Investors must make their own investment decisions based on their specific objectives, resources and only after consulting such independent advisors as may be necessary.
Though the Niftyended the week near 23,450, not far from where it closed through the week, the sharp volatility on Friday points to reduced risk appetite. The downside close candle thereof, marking the second consecutive weekly red candle, is the first such instance since March.
This also marks the first close in six weeks below the 10-week SMA, hinting at the potential for the start of a downtrend that is not evident on the face of it. That said, Nifty is still held within the recent trading range of 23,152-23,500, a break of which is expected in the current week.
We do not see a runaway move, though, with 22,800-23,650 likely to keep a lid on swings.
Nifty now slipped 1% below the 10-day SMA, dragging all major sectoral indices except for media and Consumer Durables below their respective 10-day SMAs. However, the Nifty Small Cap 250 index is 0.48% above this key short-term moving average.
Meanwhile, FPIs remained visibly bearish through the week, especially in their positioning in index futures. Their long-short ratio in the index futures segment is at 8, approaching record lows. This has come to be as a consequence of a 26% increase in short positions and an 18% reduction in long positions.
With these in the background, we have discussed below two sector themes.
PSU banks positioned for upside as selling pressure eases
The Nifty PSU Bank Ondex continues to consolidate near the 8,250 zone, maintaining its position above a key horizontal support area. On the weekly chart, the formation of a pinbar-doji candle around this support reflects prevailing market indecision while also signalling that selling pressure is gradually being absorbed at lower levels.
From a momentum standpoint, the MACD histogram has started to show contracting bars, indicating a slowdown in bearish momentum. This development raises the likelihood of a potential bullish crossover, provided prices manage to hold current levels.
At the same time, the index is hovering near the Supertrend indicator, which is acting as a crucial dynamic trigger, suggesting that a decisive directional move may be imminent.
Structurally, the index remains confined within a range, with strong support placed around 7,800. Any breakdown below this level would invalidate the near-term constructive outlook and could result in sharper downside pressure. On the flip side, a confirmed breakout above the recent swing highs could pave the way for an upward move toward the 8,600-8,900 zone. SelectPSU Banking stocks such as Indian Bank, Canara Bank and Bank Of India are already displaying early reversal patterns and may lead the index higher in the coming sessions.
Nifty FMCG: Early signs of bullish reversal near key Fibonacci support
The Nifty FMCG index is beginning to show encouraging signs of a potential recovery after stabilising near the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level of the April–May uptrend. The appearance of multiple doji candles around this area indicates a phase of demand absorption, pointing toward the formation of a potential base at lower levels.
Momentum indicators are also aligning with a constructive outlook. The MACD histogram is printing progressively smaller negative bars, reflecting fading bearish momentum and increasing the probability of an upward bounce. This is further supported by price behaviour, as the index has not witnessed aggressive follow-through selling despite recent weakness.
From a structural perspective, maintaining levels above 47,650 remains critical for sustaining the bullish argument. As long as this support holds, the overall risk-reward continues to favour an upside resolution. A gradual breakout above near-term resistance levels could trigger a move toward the 48,950-49,500 range.
Leading FMCG stocks such as ITC, Varun Beverages Dabur India andTata Consumer Products are exhibiting positive setups and are likely to play a key role in driving the index’s potential recovery in the near-term.
Report by Anand James, Chief Market Strategist at Geojit Investments.
A powerful bull rally has been running quietly through the lower rungs of India's stock market since the start of April, with small and microcap stocks staging a sharp recovery and delivering returns that have left large-cap benchmarks far behind — even as foreign institutional investors pulled billions out on account of stretched valuations, a rising crude oil import bill, and a deteriorating trade balance.
With no homegrown artificial intelligence stocks to offer, India has lost out to global markets where FIIs have been redeploying capital chasing AI-driven returns, while the unresolved US-Iran conflict has kept crude above $100 per barrel, stoking inflation and deepening fiscal anxieties. Yet none of it has been enough to stop the rally in smaller stocks.The turnaround in market breadth has been striking. Of the 3,343 BSE-listed companies trading below Rs 10,000 crore in market capitalisation, only 398, or 12 percent, were in positive territory between January and March 2026. Since April, nearly 2,358 companies, or 70 percent of the total, have delivered positive returns. Among the gainers, 59 stocks surged between 100 percent and 200 percent, 361 rose between 50 percent and 100 percent, 924 gained between 25 percent and 50 percent, and 1,497 delivered returns between 1 percent and 25 percent. Only around 50 stocks remained flat, while 452 continued to trade in negative territory.
Index-level data captures the divergence in sharper relief. The Sensex and Nifty each fell 15 percent between January and March, the BSE MidCap 150 lost 13 percent, and the BSE SmallCap 250 and BSE Microcap each shed 15 percent. Since April, the Sensex and Nifty have recovered just 4 percent, while the BSE MidCap 150 has jumped 14 percent, the BSE SmallCap 250 has surged 20 percent, and the BSE Microcap has gained 23 percent.Earnings have provided the fundamental underpinning for the move. According to ACE Equities data, aggregate net profit of these 2,358 companies jumped 76 percent year-on-year in the March 2026 quarter, the strongest growth in 15 quarters. On a sequential basis, net profit rose 23 percent, the highest in eight quarters. Operating profit climbed 17 percent year-on-year, the strongest in 10 quarters, while the quarter-on-quarter increase of 13 percent was the highest in 21 quarters. Revenues expanded in double digits for the seventh consecutive quarter.The rally is not purely liquidity-driven, according to Siddhartha Khemka, Head of Research at Motilal Oswal Financial Services. He attributed the sharp improvement in market breadth since April to a combination of valuation comfort, improving earnings delivery, and a revival in risk appetite. "Following the correction during January-March 2026, valuations across the broader market became significantly more attractive, particularly in small and midcaps," he said. Khemka noted that the strong earnings were led by sectors including banking and financial services, metals, oil marketing companies, telecom, and automobiles.A similar recovery unfolded among companies with market capitalisation between Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 20,000 crore. Of the 181 firms in this bracket, only 38, or 21 percent, had posted positive returns during January-March. Since April, 160 stocks, or 84 percent of the segment, have moved into positive territory. Two stocks more than doubled, 13 gained between 50 percent and 100 percent, 35 advanced between 25 percent and 50 percent, and 110 delivered returns between 1 percent and 25 percent, leaving only 21 in the red.
Earnings in this segment, however, told a different story. Aggregate net profit declined 30 percent year-on-year in the March quarter, the steepest drop since available data begins in December 2019, and fell for a second consecutive quarter on a sequential basis. Operating profit rose just 7 percent year-on-year, the slowest pace in five quarters, while revenue growth of 13 percent was the weakest in three quarters.Independent research analyst Ajay Bodke pointed to the earnings divergence as a key driver of the rally in smaller stocks. "If you look at the divergence in earnings growth for the March quarter between small-cap and large-cap, it is quite visibly large," he said, adding that valuations in smaller stocks had been beaten down sharply and the rally was compensating for that erosion in market capitalisation.The recovery has been notably more restrained among large-cap companies with market capitalisation above Rs 20,000 crore. Of the 316 such BSE-listed firms, only 60 were in positive territory between January and March. Since April, the number of gainers has risen to 164, with 11 stocks climbing between 50 percent and 100 percent, 53 gaining between 25 percent and 50 percent, and 100 advancing between 10 percent and 25 percent. The remaining 152 either posted single-digit gains or stayed in negative territory.
Large-cap earnings have also trailed smaller peers. Aggregate net profit for the March quarter rose 13.9 percent year-on-year, while both revenue and operating profit grew 12 percent each. Among Nifty 50 companies, net profit grew just 4 percent year-on-year, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of single-digit earnings growth and the first such streak since the pandemic. Revenue rose 12 percent, while operating profit increased 4 percent.Bodke pointed to the pattern of foreign selling as a structural reason behind large caps lagging. FIIs have been consistently offloading shares over the last three years, with the bulk of the selling concentrated in mega-cap and large-cap names. "Typically, you sell what you own," he said, noting that FII portfolios are heavily weighted toward frontline names such as Infosys, TCS, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Bharti Airtel. Domestic institutional investors, mutual funds, high-net-worth individuals, and retail investors, by contrast, have provided steady support to mid and small-cap stocks, absorbing much of the foreign selling pressure.Yet sustaining the rally from here will require continued earnings support. Despite the strong results, forward earnings revisions remain relatively muted. The FY27 earnings upgrade-to-downgrade ratio stood at just 0.9x, with 103 companies upgraded and 110 downgraded, and aggregate FY27 earnings estimates for the Motilal Oswal universe were trimmed by 1.3 percent. "Some pockets are beginning to exhibit signs of excessive optimism where stock prices have risen much faster than earnings expectations," Khemka said. "The next phase of returns is likely to be far more selective and earnings-driven rather than liquidity-driven."Navneet Munot, MD and CEO of HDFC AMC, echoed the caution. "In this segment, dispersion between winners and losers can be significant, making business fundamentals, earnings quality, governance standards, and valuations far more important than market sentiment," he said. "A disciplined and diversified approach remains the most prudent way to participate in this opportunity set."The macro backdrop poses additional challenges. Crude oil and commodity prices have moved higher amid geopolitical tensions in West Asia, which could keep inflationary pressures elevated. The monsoon outlook is relatively weaker than initially expected, potentially limiting a rural demand recovery. Private capital expenditure is showing early signs of improvement but investment activity continues to be largely supported by government spending, which itself faces pressure from a higher import bill and fiscal constraints. FY27 earnings expectations, however, remain strongest in the broader market, with the Motilal Oswal universe projecting 16 percent earnings growth for mid-caps and 30 percent for small-caps, compared with 8 percent for large-caps.Looking ahead, Bodke said the performance gap between large caps and smaller peers could begin to narrow if geopolitical conditions ease. A resolution to the Iran conflict, a permanent ceasefire, or a cooling in oil prices could reduce selling pressure on large caps and draw foreign flows back into India. Any moderation in the AI-driven global
rally could also redirect capital toward Indian equities, benefiting large caps and narrowing the divergence.
