Slowdown blues: Realty index hits new 52-week low; DLF, Unitech under hammer

While equity market sentiment remained sluggish in the second-half of the trading session, realty stocks, however, came under severe hammering with the BSE Realty index hitting a fresh one-year low amid weakness in several frontline stocks such as DLF, Unitech etc. With the current month’s derivatives expiry scheduled for Thursday, investors seem to be exiting stocks having high-risk quotient such as realty. With most of realty companies expected to post weak first-quarter earnings, there seems to be little hope on improving fundamentals as high inventory levels and subdued sales continue to rue the sector. [caption id=“attachment_2367250” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] According to a recent Emkay Research report, real estate price have corrected by 30-50 percent in several parts of the country, while exorbitantly high land prices have restricted meaningful pickup in real estate. At 1.05 pm, the BSE Realty index was at 1,296.38, down 2.04 percent after hitting a 52-week low of 1,292.22. Among the laggards, shares of DLF fell 4 percent to Rs 97.20 after sliding to a new 1-year low of Rs 96.55 a short while ago. Others such as Prestige Estate Projects dropped 3.8 percent to Rs 205.50, HDIL 3.6 percent to Rs 80.40, Godrej Properties 3.2 percent to Rs 260.65, Sobha Developers 3.1 percent to Rs 336.30 and Unitech 1.6 percent to Rs 6.56.