BENGALURU, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Indian shares held steady on Wednesday as consumer and IT stocks negated losses in private banks, while investors awaited a slew of big companies to report their earnings later in the day.
The blue-chip NSE Nifty 50 index and the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex rose 0.1% each to 18,293 and 61,390 respectively, by 0521 GMT.
The Nifty fast moving consumer index advanced 0.6%, while the information technology index climbed 0.4%.
Analysts said market participants were worried about the impact of commodity inflation on corporate profit margins.
"There is top line growth in earnings, but there is margin impact due to raw material, employee costs. People have to be sector- and stock-specific when it comes to investment," said A K Prabhakar, head of research at IDBI Capital.
Many top-tier companies including leading car maker Maruti Suzuki, Larsen & Toubro, cigarette maker ITC , Bajaj Auto, Titan Company and Adani Enterprises will report their earnings on Wednesday.
Shares of paint companies surged after reports Asian Paints was planning steep price hikes to offset commodity costs. Asian paints rose 4.7%, while Berger Paints, Shalimar Paints, Akzo Nobel India gained more than 2% each.
"Our recent interactions with channel partners (paint dealers) suggest that Asian Paints is planning to execute the steepest price increases of 15-45% in the history of the paint industry," Centrum Broking said in a report.
Shares of Kotak Mahindra Bank rose as much as 2% to a record high after the company posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit, while Zensar Technologies jumped 8% after reporting strong results.
Private-sector lender Axis Bank fell as much as 5.1% on weaker loan and margin growth compared to peers, dragging down the Nifty private bank index by 0.6%. (Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
