Tata Steel buys high, sells low

Tata Steel’s shine has gone dim today. The stock is down over 3.5% at Rs.202, just a tad above its intra day low of Rs.201.50. It is dangerously close to its 52-week low of Rs.200.40 which it had hit on 25th August.

The company has come under fire for subscribing to the rights issue of Tata Motors while on the other hand, it had sold shares to bring in money and pare debt. Thus the logic of selling and then subscribing to the rights makes no sense. The worst part – it bought shares in the Rights at a price higher than the price at which it sold shares.

Tata Steel had sold 38.5 million shares of Tata Motors at Rs.324.60 each and prior to that, in May, it bought 8.34 million shares at Rs.448/share in the rights issue.

Tata Steel's consolidated net debt stood at Rs 71,951 crore at end of FY15.