Sensex, Nifty surge to lifetime highs; powered by rally in IT stocks

Mumbai: Benchmark equity indices Sensex and Nifty surged to their fresh all-time highs on Friday, driven by a sharp rally in IT stocks.

The 30-share BSE Sensex jumped 999.78 points to reach a new record of 72,720.96 during the fag-end trade.

The Nifty climbed 281.05 points to reach its fresh record peak of 21,928.25.

Among the Sensex firms, Infosys jumped nearly 8 per cent after the company's December quarter earnings came in line with market expectations.

Tata Consultancy Services climbed nearly 4 per cent after the largest software exporter reported an 8.2 per cent growth in net income for the December quarter at Rs 11,735 crore, driven by a massive growth in the home market that offset to a large extent the impact of a 3 per cent degrowth in the US market.

The other prominent gainers were Tech Mahindra, Wipro, HCL Technologies and State Bank of India.

Power Grid, Bajaj Finserv, UltraTech Cement and HDFC Bank were among the laggards.

The BSE Information Technology index jumped 4.99 per cent, the most among the sectoral indices. Teck also gained over 4 per cent.

"With inline results from Infosys and better-than-expected results from TCS, IT stocks will see some action today. Even though there is no positive message from the management commentary, the market is likely to respond positively to the absence of any bad news," VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said earlier in the day.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded equities worth Rs 865 crore on Thursday, according to exchange data.

The BSE benchmark climbed 63.47 points or 0.09 per cent to settle at 71,721.18 on Thursday. The Nifty gained 28.50 points or 0.13 per cent to 21,647.20.