Investors continued to buy shares of Essar oil on Wednesday after the India’s second largest private refiner reported five-fold growth in net profit at Rs 1,008 crore in the quarter ended January-March, driven by higher forex gain, better operational performance and lower finance cost. The stock rallied as much as 19 percent intraday to touch a 52-week high of Rs 92.15. Total income grew nearly 7 percent to Rs 25,274 crore in March quarter from Rs 23,650 crore in the quarter gone by.

Mahindra and Mahindra says the company, as part of aligning its production with sales requirements, would be observing no production days at the company’s automotive plants for upto 3 days during the remaining period of May, 2014. The company further says one of its wholly owned subsidiary viz, Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers plant at Chakan would also be observing No Production Days for upto 3 days during the remaining period of May 2014. The management does not envisage any adverse impact on availability of vehicles in the market due to adequacy of vehicle stocks to serve the market requirements.

Shyam Srinivasan, MD & CEO, Federal Bank expects the bank’s net interest margin (NIMs) to remain stable in the range of 3.3-3.35 percent in FY15 Banking on the retail and SME segments, Srinivasan expects the credit growth momentum to continue going ahead. Meanwhile, he added that the private sector lender is well capitalized and is not looking to raise funds at this point of time. Kerala-based Federal Bank reported a rise of 24.94 percent in net profit at Rs 277.29 crore in Q4FY14 versus Rs Rs 221.94 crore posted in the same quarter a year ago. Its total income during the last quarter of FY14 rose to Rs 2,017.12 crore, from Rs 1,780.31 crore a year earlier.

The sharemarket extended losses in noon trade with the Sensex falling 87.99 points to 24288.89 and the Nifty losing 21.95 points to 7253.55 but the broader markets continued to outperform benchmarks for the third consecutive day.