The Impact of COVID-19 on Stock Returns of the Indian Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Sector

Abstract

Increasing COVID-19 cases has not only impacted health and day-to-day lives of people, but it has also had a material effect on India’s economic growth. Stock returns of various sectors are evidence of a country’s stagnated growth but the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector might be affected in a different manner. The purpose of this paper is to find out how has this pandemic has impacted the healthcare and pharma stocks. Daily closing prices of sector specific indexes for 233 days ranging from 15 May 2019 to 24 April 2020 have been taken to compare different sectors with our test sector, on the basis of different criteria. This study has applied the widely used event study methodology on our test sector; calculated abnormal returns, cumulative abnormal returns and also tested their significance. Event study approach suggests that there have been significant abnormal returns and cumulative abnormal returns in our test sector (healthcare and pharmaceutical sector) over the event window, though while comparing it with other sectors through another econometric model, the returns are not statistically significant and do not explicitly indicate the same.