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Mint
21 minutes ago
- Business
- Mint
US stock market ends higher; S&P 500, Nasdaq hit record close on trade deal, US Fed rate cut hopes
US stock market ended higher on Friday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq recording their all-time closing highs, lifted by hopes of a US-China trade deal and US Federal Reserve interest rate cuts after soft economic data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 432.43 points, or 1.00%, to 43,819.27, while the S&P 500 rose 32.05 points, or 0.52%, to 6,173.07. The Nasdaq Composite closed 105.55 points, or 0.52%, higher at 20,273.46. All three major US stock indexes posted weekly gains. Among the 11 major sectors of the S&P 500, consumer discretionary was the top gainer, while energy shares were the laggards. Upon reaching its record closing high, the tech-heavy Nasdaq confirmed it entered a bull market when it touched its post 'liberation day' trough on April 8, Reuters reported. The blue-chip Dow remained 2.7% below its record closing high reached on December 4. US stock market gained as investors risk-appetite improved after Washington and Beijing reached an agreement to expedite rare-earth shipments from China to the US, a White House official said, well ahead of the July 9 expiration of the 90-day postponement of US President Donald Trump's 'reciprocal' tariffs, Reuters reported. Additionally, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration's trade deals with 18 of the main US trading partners could be done by the September 1 Labor Day holiday. On the NYSE, there were 347 new highs and 55 new lows. On the Nasdaq, 2,111 stocks rose and 2,342 fell as declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.11-to-1 ratio. Nvidia share price gained 1.8%, edging closer to $4 trillion market capitalization, while Amazon shares rallied 2.85%. Micron Technology shears eased 0.98%, while Tesla stock price dropped 1.43%. Nike shares jumped 15.2% after forecasting a smaller-than-expected drop in first-quarter revenue. US consumer spending unexpectedly fell in May. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic activity, dropped 0.1% last month after an unrevised 0.2% gain in April. That was the second decline in consumer spending this year. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer spending would edge up 0.1%. A separate report from the University of Michigan confirmed consumer sentiment has improved this month, but remains well below December's post-election bounce. Financial markets have priced in a 76% likelihood that the Fed will implement its first rate cut of the year in September, with a smaller, 19% probability of a rate cut coming as soon as July, according to CME's FedWatch tool. (With inputs from Reuters) Disclaimer: The views and recommendations made above are those of individual analysts or broking companies, and not of Mint. We advise investors to check with certified experts before making any investment decisions.
Mint
21 minutes ago
- Business
- Mint
Four oil-related stocks to keep on your watchlist
Oil prices surged recently amid renewed geopolitical tensions between Israel and Iran, bringing the spotlight back on the energy sector. The global oil and gas industry is projected to exceed $9.8 trillion in value by 2029, driven by exploration, digital adoption, and cleaner tech. A few companies act as the backbone of the oil extraction process and stand to benefit from the sector's growth. They provide high-tech tools, drilling rigs, maintenance services, seismic surveys, and engineering expertise required to discover and produce oil and gas safely and efficiently. In short, while oil companies get the headlines, these companies do the heavy lifting, making energy extraction possible, efficient, and increasingly sustainable. This article explores four such oil equipment and services companies that hold a promising future, and have strong fundamentals and sound financials. Have a look: #1 Jindal Drilling & Industries Ltd (JDIL) Jindal Drilling & Industries Limited (JDIL) is part of the D.P. Jindal Group Drilling Division. It is a leading company among Indian private sector companies in offshore drilling, including directional drilling and mud logging, with operations since 1989. The company operates five oil rigs, all of which are deployed with ONGC. It's expecting full revenue contribution from its newly acquired rig Jindal Pioneer from Q1 FY26. Its clients include ONGC, GAIL, Oil India Ltd, Essar, Alliance, etc. The company's order book as on 31 March 2025 is ₹1,791 crore. Jindal Drilling & Industries' share price has increased 3.6% over the past one year, while in the last six months it has decreased 12.6%. The company's revenue has grown at a CAGR of 24.4% in the last five years, while its net profit has grown at a CAGR of 5%. The five-year average return on equity (RoE) is 3.7%, and return on capital employed (RoCE) is 5.9%. For FY25, the company reported revenue of ₹884 crore (up 37%), net profit of ₹141 crore (up 24%), with an Ebitda margin of 29%, and a net margin of 17%. #2 Asian Energy Services Ltd Asian Energy Services Ltd is an oilfield service and reservoir imaging company. It offers a suite of geophysical services specialising in land and well seismic services, and operation and maintenance services for oilfields. It's one of the few companies providing end-to-end services in the upstream oil segment. The 100% acquisition of Kuiper Group (UAE-based, owned by Gulf Capital PE) by the company is a milestone in its expansion across energy markets in the West Asia and Southeast Asia. The company's order book as on 31 March 2025 is ₹973 crore. Asian Energy Services' share price has increased 3.7% over the past one year, while in the last six months, it has decreased 19.1%. The company's FY26 revenue growth guidance is more than 40-50% YoY, and net profit guidance is 66-78% YoY, excluding the Kuiper Group. The company's revenue has grown at a CAGR of 24.4% in the last five years, while its net profit has grown at a CAGR of 5%. The five-year average return on equity (RoE) is 3.7%, and return on capital employed (RoCE) is 5.9%. For FY25, the company reported revenue of ₹465 crore (up 52%), PAT of ₹42 crore (up by 65%), with an Ebitda margin of 15.5%, and a PAT margin of 9.1%. #3 PTC Industries Ltd PTC Industries manufactures metal components for critical and supercritical applications for industries like defence, oil & gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), ships & marine etc. It manufactures stainless steel, duplex, super duplex, nickel, cobalt alloys, non-alloy steel castings solutions, machined components, and fabricated parts catering to the oil & gas industry. The company's PowderForge technology complements the traditional casting by offering bi-metal solutions for extreme working environments. The company also supplies cryogenic valve components to leading LNG/LPG valve manufacturers. PTC Industries' share price has increased 6.2% over the past one year, while in the last six months it has increased 17%. The company's revenue has grown at a CAGR of 11.2% in the last five years, while its net profit has grown at a CAGR of 31.1%. The five-year average return on equity (RoE) is 6.7%, and return on capital employed (RoCE) is 11.4%. For FY25, the company reported total income of ₹342 crore (up 26.6%), PAT of ₹61 crore (up 44.5%), with an Ebitda margin of 32%, and a PAT margin of 17.8%. #4 Jindal Saw Ltd (JSAW) Jindal Saw is the market leader, capacity-wise, in the manufacturing of large diameter submerged arc welded (SAW) pipes. The company is a global leader in the coated and bare pipe industry, and the world's third-largest producer of rust-free iron pipes. The SAW pipes (line pipes) division of the company is mainly used in the transportation of oil, gas, slurry, and water. In addition, Jindal SAW provides relevant, value-added services by way of anti-corrosion coatings, connector casings, hot pulled induction bends, etc, thus becoming a 'Total Pipe Solutions' company. The company's exposure to the oil and gas sector accounts for approximately one-fourth of its total revenue. JSAW has government and private sector clients anda strong domestic and international presence. As of FY25, the company has a standalone order book of $1.328 billion for iron & steel pipes and pellets. Jindal Saw's share price has reduced 15.3% over the past one year, and in the last six months it has reduced by 20.9%. Coming to the financials, the company's revenue has grown at a CAGR of 12.4% in the last five years, while its net profit has grown at a CAGR of 25.9%. The five-year average return on equity (RoE) is 8.8%, and return on capital employed (RoCE) is 16.7%. For FY25, the company reported total income of ₹20,948 crore (down 1%), PAT of ₹1,458 crore (down 8%), with an Ebitda margin of 16.9%, and a PAT margin of 6.9%. Conclusion In this article, we explored some of the oil field equipment and services providing companies, their role in the oil sector, and their financial performance. But there are many more companies in this space yet to be discovered. It's crucial to find quality companies with sustainable earnings, consistent growth, and sound financials. Keeping an eye on these companies could offer an investment opportunity and portfolio diversification to investors. Investors should evaluate the company's fundamentals, corporate governance, and valuations of the stock as key factors when conducting due diligence before making an investment decision. Happy Investing. Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only. It is not a stock recommendation and should not be treated as such. This article is syndicated from
Mint
30 minutes ago
- Business
- Mint
The week in charts: GST revamp, Oil Plan B, Wegovy launch, India tops again
A revamp of the goods and services tax (GST) regime is on the cards, with the compensation cess likely to be merged into the main GST rates. Separately, India has activated a Plan B to secure oil supplies amid continued tensions in West Asia. Despite global headwinds, India retained its top spot among emerging market peers in May. GST revamp The finance ministry may merge the compensation cess on sin and luxury goods into the goods and services tax (GST) rates, Mint reported. The decision won't impact consumers as overall tax outgo would remain unchanged. Compensation cess, which makes up about 7% of the total collections, was levied on top of the GST rate to compensate states for potential revenue loss due to the transition to GST regime. This arrangement is set to expire in March 2026. The shift may become a part of recommendations on the tax-sharing formula for five years starting FY27 by the Sixteenth Finance Commission. Hefty bounty Indian companies doled out a record dividend of ₹4.9 trillion in FY25, despite the lacklustre earnings. Promoters, led by those in private firms, pocketed 51.5% of total dividends declared. A Mint analysis of 370 consistent dividend-payers from the BSE 500 shows that promoters with over 70% stake saw their dividend receipts surge by 45%. Those holding 50-70% and below 50% experienced more modest increases of 8.5% and 8.9% respectively. This trend indicates that higher promoter holdings, in some instances, led to increased dividend payouts. VIP deal 26%: Is the stake domestic private equity (PE) firms such as Multiples Alternatives and 360 One are eyeing in luggage maker VIP Industries, Mint reported. The stake sale could also trigger an open offer. The promoters currently own a little more than 50% of VIP Industries, shows stock exchange data. The sale is part of the promoters' ongoing efforts to exit the business. Last November, the company's talks with PE firm Advent International to sell a controlling stake fell through due to valuation mismatches. Oil Plan B India has devised an emergency plan to secure oil supplies amid the uncertainties in West Asia, Mint reported. It involves bypassing the Strait of Hormuz via two pipelines: Abu Dhabi National Oil Co's Habshan-Fujairah that opens to the Gulf of Oman, and Saudi Aramco's East-West to the Red Sea. India could also boost imports from the US. The recent conflict between Israel and Iran, with threats of closure of Strait of Hormuz had exposed India's vulnerability as the country imports over 40% of its oil from West Asian countries. India tops India, with a score of 67 out of 100, retained top spot among emerging economies in May, showed Mint's emerging markets tracker. However, the win came with a narrow lead. Thailand came a close second with a score of 66.6 due to best export performance. While India's score was driven by India's fastest GDP growth among peers, robust manufacturing activity, and sustained stock market gains, the lead narrowed due to deteriorated export growth and currency fluctuations. In April, India had scored 87.9. Slim deal ₹17,345: That is the starting price in India for Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drug Wegovy, launched earlier this week. The drug is administered as a once-a-week injectable pen and is prescribed for chronic weight management and reducing major adverse cardiovascular events. Available in five dosing strengths—0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, 1.7 mg and 2.4 mg—Wegovy is expected in pharmacies by end of the month. The launch follows rival Eli Lilly's introduction of Mounjaro in March 2025, intensifying competition in India's obesity treatment market. Bumper bonus Indian investment banks awarded record bonuses to their top brass this year as they earned substantial fees in FY25, Mint reported. It was fuelled by a surge in deals and initial public offering activity, and hefty fees earned by investment banks from them. Firms like Kotak Mahindra Capital, Axis Capital, Avendus Capital, and JM Financial reportedly distributed over $1 million bonuses to top executives. Indian investment banks earned over $1.35 billion in fee income in FY25, highest in the post-pandemic period, showed data from London Stock Exchange Group. Chart of the week: Space take-off Shubhanshu Shukla made history by becoming the first Indian astronaut to travel to the International Space Station (ISS). A look at data shows that ISIS visits are dominated by individuals representing the US (169), which is also home to Nasa. This is followed by Russia (63), Japan (11), and Canada (9). Follow our data stories on the'In Charts" and'Plain Facts" pages on the Mint website.
Mint
31 minutes ago
- Business
- Mint
ChatGPT Record to transcribe audio meetings
Meetings are critical for collaboration, but capturing their essence is often difficult. Manually scribbling notes often misses key points, leading to miscommunication or forgotten action items. Post-meeting, summarizing discussions takes hours, and transcribing audio manually is tedious, error-prone, and time-consuming. This chaos frustrates teams, delays decisions, and risks losing valuable insights from brainstorms or client calls. ChatGPT Record solves this by automatically transcribing audio, generating structured summaries, and transforming them into actionable outputs, saving time and ensuring clarity. How to access: Currently, it's only available for the macOS desktop app and for ChatGPT Enterprise, Edu, Team, and Pro workspaces. Visit ChatGPT Record can help you • Transcribe meetings: Instantly convert audio from meetings or voice notes into text.• Summarize discussions: Create structured summaries saved as canvases in your chat history.• Transform outputs: Convert summaries into emails, project plans, or code scaffolds.• Reference past recordings: Use prior transcripts for context-aware responses. Example Imagine you're leading a team brainstorming session for a product launch. The room buzzes with ideas—marketing strategies, feature tweaks, and timelines but you're struggling to keep up. • Start recording: Click the Record button, grant microphone permissions, and confirm team consent per local laws.• Speak freely: As your team debates pricing and launch dates, ChatGPT transcribes live, displaying a timer. You pause to clarify a point, then resume.• Generate notes: After the meeting ends, hit Send. The transcript uploads, and a canvas appears with a summary, highlighting marketing ideas, assigned tasks, and deadlines.• Transform: Ask ChatGPT to draft a project plan from the canvas, including a Gantt chart outline. Export it as a PDF and share it with stakeholders. What makes ChatGPT Record special? • Real-time transcription: Live transcription with pause/resume flexibility.• Actionable outputs: Summaries can be repurposed into plans, emails, or code.• Privacy-first: Audio files are deleted post-transcription; transcripts follow workspace retention policies. Mint's 'AI tool of the week' is excerpted from Leslie D'Monte's weekly TechTalk newsletter. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your email inbox. Note: The tools and analysis featured in this section demonstrated clear value based on our internal testing. Our recommendations are entirely independent and not influenced by the tool creators. Jaspreet Bindra is co-founder and CEO of AI&Beyond. Anuj Magazine is also a co-founder.
Mint
31 minutes ago
- Politics
- Mint
Counting the carbon footprint of Israel's war on Gaza as Asia's climate crisis becomes more severe
Climate Change & You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your inbox. Dear reader, War is in the air, and all the uncertainties and tragedies that come with it. In times like these, when bombing raids dominate the daily news cycle, it can become difficult to recognize that other problems—like climate change—exist, and that rising global temperature doesn't discriminate between who is bombing and who is getting bombed. The end outcome is the same for everyone, and equally grim. War and the climate crisis are not unrelated subjects. In fact, they are deeply intertwined, because ultimately, every explosion, every missile fired, every building and life destroyed, follows the basic laws of physics, like the transference of energy (a building explodes into smoke), moving in a straight line towards entropy, or the ultimate end of matter. Take Israel's relentless bombing of Gaza since October 2023—a continuous exercise in pulverization that has levelled all of Gaza Strip and killed over 55,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. A studypublished on 30 May, calculated that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the conflict in the first 15 months (October 2023-January 2025) were nearly 1.89m tCOe (million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents). Also Read | The world has already breached a dangerous level of warming, and India isn't prepared The report, aptly titled War On Climate, states that this is more than the annual emissions of 36 individual countries and territories. If one were to factor in the military preparations going into the conflict, and add the material costs of rebuilding Gaza, the emissions shoot up to over 32.2m tCO2e, overtaking the annual emissions of 102 countries. The authors note that the emissions of militaries are grossly underreported, and that their calculations 'point to the urgent need for increased visibility and mandatory reporting of military emissions for both war and peacetime". State of the climate Asia is heating up faster than the global average The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a report on Monday, the State Of The Climate in Asia 2024. Among other findings, the report states that Asia is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average. In fact, the warming trend in 1991-2025 has been nearly double that of the period of 1961-1990. Some of the other highlights from the report are the fact that Asia's major mountain ranges, especially the Tien Shan and central Himalaya, are losing glaciers at an alarming rate, with 23 out of 24 major glaciers steadily losing mass between 2023 and 2024. Intense marine heatwaves are also becoming increasingly common in the Indian Ocean, and land heat records are going through the roof. Also Read | Remembering Pope Francis's climate advocacy, Bill Aitken's nature writing, and the race to avoid runaway climate change The report highlights several cases of extreme weather events in India, including the Kerala landslide during the monsoon last year, where over 350 people died after Wayanad experienced 500mm of rainfall in just 48 hours. The report also highlights India's intense heatwaves, as well as 1,300 people losing their lives due to lightning strikes, and intense cyclones like Remal making landfall. In 2024, Asia's average temperature was 1 degree Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average. The news in brief -In a previous newsletter, I had written about Indian policy think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water's (CEEW) new research on how India is suffering from extreme heat. In this article, my Mint colleague Manjul Paul takes a closer look at the report. - Donald Trump may be the most anti-climate president in recent US history, but 70% of Americans support the need for global climate policy to tackle the climate crisis. -The world's indigenous people are on the frontlines of the devastating impacts of climate change. This haunting photo-essay takes a look at how rising temperatures are upending the lives of Peru's Andean communities. Climate change tracker Two years left to act It is becoming increasingly clear that the impacts of climate change are way worse than previously reported. We had pointed out in an earlier edition of this newsletter how the world is closer than ever to permanently breaching the 'safe' warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2030. An important new study published in early June has now presented us with more granular updates on how global indicators of the climate crisis have changed over the past year. The study titled, Indicators Of Global Climate Change 2024, is the work of a international consortium of climate scientists. It's headline findings include the fact that the world has heated up by 1.36 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, and that the current rate of warming is an alarming 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade. This means that if global GHG emissions aren't drastically reduced, we will shoot towards a catastrophic 2 degrees of warming much earlier than 2100. This also means that the hopes of keeping long-term warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius now hang by a thread. To achieve this goal, the world can burn 80 billion tonnes of fossil fuels for just under 2 years and no more. For context, in 2024, the world burned approximately 37 billion tonnes of fossil fuels. Since this is not going to happen, the study urges that we look at goals that are still achievable, like limiting warming to 1.7 degrees Celsius. For that, the world's carbon budget stretches to just over 9 years, at 390 billion tonnes. Right now, we are looking at a catastrophic warming of 2.7 degrees Celsius or more by the end of the century. Know your jargon Cloudburst Over the past few years, we have become accustomed to news of cloudbursts in different parts of the country during the monsoon. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) defines this as a rain event that sees 'an extreme amount of precipitation in a short period of time, sometimes accompanied by hail and thunder, which is capable of creating flood situations". India experienced such heavy dumping of rain last monsoon, like the Kerala landslides mentioned above, or when Delhi was hit by a cloudburst-like situation on 31 July. That day, over 100mm of rain fell across 24 hours, leading to widespread flooding, and the IMD declared a red alert over the city. On 25 May this year, Himachal Pradesh experienced devastating flash floods when over 100mm of rain fell in various parts of the state in 24 hours, causing landslides and massive property damage. We may yet experience such violent rainfall events this monsoon. Also Read | India's climate crisis: Early heatwaves, Himalayan glaciers melting and a biodiversity collapse A 2020 climate report published by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), noted that as India gets hotter, cloudburst events are also increasing, with the west coast seeing a rise in short-span high intensity rain events (an increase of 5 such incidents per decade) between 1969 and 2015. The horrific deluge in the Western Ghats between 19-25 July in 2021 is testament to the havoc such rain can cause. Speaking to Mint in the aftermath of the cloudburst, then MoES secretary Madhavan Rajeevan said, 'Now the number of rainy days (in a season) is decreasing. And the length of the dry spells is increasing. There's not much change in the total amount of rain. The number of rainy days may be small, but when it rains, it will rain very heavily, so that the seasonal total will be same." Prime Number 120 A recent study published in the journal Nature, titled Impacts Of Climate Change On Global Agriculture Accounting For Adaptation, states that for every 1 degree Celsius of warming, global food production will decrease by an average of 120 calories per person per day. For the study, researchers conducted a wide survey of 12,658 regions across 54 countries to understand if adapting to a warming climate can offset losses to food production. They found that under the current heating scenario, staples like wheat will see reduced yields of 7.7%, soy by 16% and corn by 8.3%. If our daily meals are to be divided into breakfast, lunch and dinner, this would be akin to the world giving up breakfast. If the world were to heat up by more than 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, then crop losses will be much more severe. 'In a high-warming future, we're still seeing caloric productivity losses in the order of 25% at global scale," the study's lead author Andrew Hultgren, an environmental economist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told The Guardian. Book of the month This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein It may be common knowledge now, but author and activist Naomi Klein's 2014 book was the first to lay bare in forensic detail the intimate relationship between the capitalist mode of production, fossil fuels and the climate crisis. Published a year before the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, nearly everything that Klein talks about still holds true, be it the organized way in which climate denialism works or the dangerous techno-fantasies of geoengineering. Ironically, this goes to show that in the eleven years sinceThis Changes Everything was published, nothing really has changed. However, it remains a powerful book and a great introduction to the climate crisis. So that's it for this edition of Climate Change & You, dear reader. Sayantan will be back in a fortnight with the next instalment. Also Read This rice is set to make your meal climate-friendly
