Just Dial shares freeze at 10% upper circuit in a weak market

 Shares of Just Dial were frozen at the 10 per cent upper circuit limit at Rs 642.25 on the BSE in an otherwise weak market on Monday. In comparison, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 1.4 per cent or 569 points at 40,117 at 03:12 pm.

A combined around 9 million equity shares changed hands and there were pending buy orders for 114,000 shares on the NSE and BSE, the exchange data shows.

The stock was trading close to its 52-week high of Rs 646, touched on October 25, 2019. In the past month, it has rallied 72 per cent, as compared to a 7.4 per cent rise in the S&P BSE Sensex.

Anita Mani, promoter and director had purchased 679,677 equity shares of Just Dial for Rs 25.33 crore between September 25 and September 30, 2020, according to a disclosure made by the company to the stock exchange. The names of sellers were not ascertained immediately.

Anita Mani bought these shares at an average price of Rs 373 per share. Post-acquisition, her holding in Just Dial has increased to 3.12 per cent from 2.02 per cent, data shows.

The board of Just Dial is scheduled to meet on Friday, October 30, 2020, to consider the unaudited financial results of the company for the quarter ended September 2020 (Q2FY21). The board will also discuss any other business with the permission of the chair, it said.

"Just Dial intends to launch two new products by CY2020-end i.e. JD Mart, a B2B e-commerce portal, and JD Xperts, an on-demand service platform. Diversification into an adjacent category is positive, though execution and monetization will be key," analysts at Kotak Securities said in a note.

“JUST’s core business has seen growth rates taper off due to loss of high-paying accounts and competition from vertical players. However, we view JUST’s endeavor to tap into an adjacent business line as positive, given it already has a sales force, decent brand acceptance amongst SMEs as well as organic traffic. However, JUST has struggled with execution in the past (SearchPlus, Omni). It is thus too early to bake in earnings from the new platform; we instead view the new businesses as extensions of the core business,” the brokerage firm said while downgrading the stock to REDUCE as it believes current market price adequately factors in this optimism.