Foreign institutional investors have hiked their shareholding in cement, steel, consumer products and software stocks in the second quarter (July-September) of fiscal 2004-05.

A study of the shareholding pattern of 20 Sensex stocks at the end of the quarter shows that FIIs booked profits in domestic pharmaceuticals and automobile stocks.

Data for the other 10 Sensex stocks are not currently available. FIIs were buyers in non-index stocks such as Essar Steel, Visual Software, Cranes Software and HCL Infosystems. This also indicates their appetite for technology and steel stocks.

FIIs seem to be bullish on the cement sector too as they have increased their holding in the two cement stocks in the Sensex basket.

The FII holding in Gujarat Ambuja Cement has increased by 1.88 percentage points to 23.2 per cent after they bought 33.73 million shares during the quarter.

The FIIs hiked their holding in ACC by 0.6 percentage points to 22.94 per cent by picking up 1.18 million shares during the quarter.

The FII holding in Tata Steel jumped up to 11.98 per cent as against 9.61 per cent at the end of the June quarter as they added 13.12 million shares between July and September.

The FIIs, which sold software stocks during the previous two quarters, made fresh purchases in Infosys Technologies and Wipro.

Their holding in Infosys rose 0.83 percentage points to 40.57 per cent and by 0.22 percentage points to 2.52 per cent in Wipro.

Profit booking by FIIs was seen in all the three automobile stocks in the Sensex. The FIIs sold 20.56 lakh shares of Hero Honda, around 4.5 lakh shares of Bajaj Auto and 6.1 lakh shares of Tata Motors.

As a result, their holding in Hero Honda declined by 1.03 percentage points to 23.12 per cent, that in Bajaj Auto by 0.48 percentage points to 16.14 per cent and in Tata Motors by 0.17 percentage points to 21.3 per cent.

Pharmaceutical companies such as Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Ranbaxy Laboratories continued to figure in the FIIs' selling list.

They sold 15.84 lakh shares (2.07 per cent) of Dr Reddy's and 9.85 lakh shares (0.53 per cent) of Ranbaxy. However, they bought 39.88 lakh shares (1.33 per cent) in Cipla.