Retail investors held shares worth Rs 5.71 lakh crore in 10 heavyweight companies in December quarter. They included Reliance Industries (RIL), HDFC Bank, Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and ITC, among others. Among them, RIL was the only listed company on NSE where retail investors held over Rs 1 lakh crore in investments, as per PRIME Database.
Retail investors owned Rs 1,25,937 crore worth of stake in oil-to-telecom major RIL as of December quarter. This was against the Mukesh Ambani-led company’s total market capitalisation (m-cap) of Rs 15,81,329 crore. Retail investors held HDFC Bank shares worth Rs 75,150 crore. This private lender commanded a total m-cap of Rs 9,01,092 crore. HUL was the third biggest retail holding, with a value of Rs 64,140 crore. The FMCG giant commanded Rs 6,13,748 crore in m-cap as of December 31.
Retail investors held a total of Rs 19.94 lakh crore worth shares as on December 31, 2022. This was an increase of 2.35 per cent over the last quarter. That said, in percentage terms, retail ownership stood 7.23 per cent of total NSE m-cap as of December 31, down from 7.34 per cent in the September quarter.
Construction and engineering major L&T and IT giant TCS were two other NSE-listed stocks where retail ownership was worth in excess of Rs 50,000 crore. Small investors owned Rs 54,103 crore worth L&T shares and Rs 54,067 crore worth ITC shares as of December 31.
Infosys (Rs 45,867 crore), Asian Paints (Rs 36,313 crore), HDFC (Rs 35,091 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs 33,788 crore) were other stocks where retail investors were invested heavily. Data showed retail investors owned Rs 5,71,278 crore worth of the 10 stocks.
In percentage terms, Ujaas Energy at 86.38 per cent was the company with highest retail holding in percentage terms. Sintex Industries (82.58 per cent), Visagar Polytex (74.17 per cent), Antarctica (71.41 per cent) and Sintex Plastics Technology (68.48 per cent) are some of the other big retail holdings.
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