Mumbai: Satyam Computers, who announced its fourth quarter results on April 24, helped in a long way to mitigate intense sell-off in old economy heavyweights but the SENSEX ended in negative territory for the third day in a row on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

Operators, who had built up positions in blue-chip counters, pressed heavy sales in a bid to square up their holdings during the last session of futures contract of April series, brokers said.

Had it not been for satisfactory Q4 results announced by IT major Satyam which were in keen demand throughout, the BSE barometer would have suffered a sharp setback, they added.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened moderately up at 2951.09 and thereafter fluctuated irregularly in a range between 2973.03 and 2932.34 on alternate bouts of buying and selling before ending at 2937.23 as against the April 23 close of 2947.33, a net loss of 10.10 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index eased by 5.59 points to 1461.63 from previous close of 1467.22.

Attributing the Rs 35.91 crore loss in Q4 to the exceptional expenses, including writing off investments in a subsidiary of Rs 151.70 crore, brokers said Satyam has, in fact, posted a net profit of Rs 115.79 crore which is in keeping with the market expectations.

A leading Singapore-based foreign fund alone was believed to have bought 40 lakh shares of Satyam Computers.

HLL, HPCL, HDFC, Grasim Ind, ITC, MTNL, Telco, BSES and ACC dropped sharply on heavy selling by operators.

PTI