Karvy Stock Broking Limited has maintained ‘Sell’ rating on ICICI Bank stock to achieve a target that lies between Rs 648-650 today.

The investors are advised to sell the stock to avoid loss, as there are full chances of a downward trend in this stock in today’s session.

If the stock fell below Rs 683, it may see more weakness.

According to Karvy, investors can sell the stock between Rs 690-695 with a strict stop loss of Rs 710.

After selling the stock in today’s session, the interested investors can enter the stock again, but only on declines.

Shares of the company, on Thursday (June 26), closed at Rs 697.75 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The total volume of shares traded at the BSE was 825647. Current EPS and P/E stood at 37.37 and 17.34 respectively. The share price has seen a 52-week high of Rs 2387.60 and a low of Rs 1192.05 on BSE.

ICICI Bank has allotted 36,691 equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each on Jun. 16, 2008 under the Employees Stock Option Scheme, 2000 (ESOS).

CARE also assigned `PR1+` rating to the certificate of deposit (CD) programme of ICICI Bank (Q, N,C,F)* (IBL) for an enhanced limit of Rs 500 billion (enhanced from Rs 400 billion) with a maturity upto one year. Instruments with this rating would have strong capacity for timely payment of short-term debt obligations and carry lowest credit risk.

The bank recorded a 39.35% growth in net profit to Rs 11,498.40 million for the quarter ended March 2008 from a profit of Rs 8,251.20 million for the quarter ended March 2007.

Interest earned rose 20.53% to Rs 80,292.70 million for the quarter ended March 2008 from Rs 66,615.80 million for the quarter ended March 2007.