Check out the large cap stocks where FIIs cut stake last quarter

Indian stock indices have been in the consolidation zone after swinging back and forth over the last two months having tested the all-time peak earlier this year. The top indices have lost nearly 7% value over the last one month.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs), or foreign institutional investors (FIIs), had become more cautious about investing in India over the last one year. In fact, in the October-December 2021 quarter, they were net sellers in Indian equities and pulled out over $5.1 billion in the process.

In the first four months of this year, FIIs had shown their bearish sentiments apparent with net sales of securities worth $18 billion, bulk of it on the equities side.

We scanned through the list of companies that have disclosed their shareholding patterns to get names where FIIs have cut stake. In particular, they sold stake in as many as 92 companies that have a valuation of $1 billion or more last quarter.

They were bearish on all large banks and financial services firms, top FMCG companies, most auto counters, drugmakers, telecom, cement, engineering, and IT firms other than the top two—TCS and Infosys.

Top large caps

FIIs cut stake in around 69 large caps, over twice the number of such firms with a market capitalisation of Rs 20,000 crore or more, where they trimmed their holding in the October-December 2021 period.

Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, Hindustan Unilever, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Bharti Airtel, HDFC and Bajaj Finance were among the top large caps witnessing FIIs turn bearish.

These were altogether a different set from names such as Adani Green Energy, D-Mart owner Avenue Supermarts, Adani Total Gas, SBI Life Insurance, Larsen & Toubro Infotech, ICICI Prudential Life, SBI Cards, IRCTC and JSW Energy as counters where they sold stake in the previous quarter.

Among others, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Asian Paints, HCL Technologies, Wipro, Adani Enterprises, Bajaj Finserv, L&T, Maruti Suzuki and Axis Bank also saw offshore investors snip their holding for the quarter ended March 31.

Two stocks that have seen FIIs trim holding for two consecutive quarters now are Container Corp and Indraprastha Gas.

If we look at large cap stocks where FIIs sold 2% of more stake last quarter, we get a set of ten names with Escorts topping the charts, having seen a sharp selling by foreign portfolio investors.

The others include Zee Entertainment, Bharat Forge, HDFC, Dr Reddy's Labs, Havells India, Astral, Balrampur Chini, Cummins India and IDFC.