In this quarter’s review of our recommendations, we have made 3 fund additions and a few removals from our Prime Funds and ETFs Prime ETFs list.
Around this time last year, we had analysed the FMCG sector’s March 2022 quarter earnings. At the time, the sector was grappling with twin headwinds of a demand slump and rising input costs. Valuations were still expensive. Most FMCG players have declared their results for the March 2023 quarter.
It has been a rough ride for the Indian API industry in the past 2 years. A combination of factors including price erosion in US generics, destocking, demand fluctuation, elevated raw material costs and freight costs have hit the margins of many API plays including market favourites such as Divi’s, Laurus and Aarti Drugs. Their growth has also remained at low single digits in this period.
Still, if a company has managed to remain resilient in this period and yet corrected to valuations that make it attractive, it deserves to be noticed.
For Indian investors looking for regular income with the possibility of capital appreciation, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) are good vehicles. These entities own a bunch of real estate or infrastructure assets that throw up regular cash flows and distribute over 90% of their cash flows to their investors. As both their income and the value of the real estate or infrastructure portfolio they own can rise over time, REITs and InvITs offer the prospect of rising income with capital gains.
With capital gains on debt fund investments now subject to short-term capital gains tax irrespective of holding period, other debt instruments have become quite competitive with debt mutual funds.
Mankind Pharma, which operates in the domestic pharmaceuticals space, opens its Rs 4300 core IPO today. The issue is priced at a band of Rs 1,026 – Rs 1,080 per share of face value Re.1/-.
In April 2022, we had issued a buy recommendation on a general insurance player, as both the industry and the company itself were emerging from the Covid-driven impact and were poised for growth. Since then, however, the insurance sector has lost market favour as growth has not panned out as expected.
When we gave the call of this R&D focused company engaged in the manufacture of enzymes and probiotics, the company had Covid-related challenges but showed promise of growth. It was later also pulled down by consolidation of acquisitions and costs related to new product launches. We therefore knew that the call would take longer to pay off. The stock went through a significant correction after our initial recommendation as earnings disappointed.
We had, in mid-2021, initiated a buy call on a stock that was reinventing itself from a supplier of diesel engines into an EV player. It was an early call we’d made on the EV boom, which appears well-timed as electric 2-wheeler sales jumped from 16,000 units in 2018 to 150,000 units in 2021 to a whopping 615,000 units in 2022!
With the EV 2-wheeler market now clearly segmenting itself, there is more clarity on how competition and market share is shaping up. The EV 2-wheeler industry is also going through regulatory tightening.
In one of our stock recommendations last year, we analysed a company that was moving from ‘tonnage to technology’. We spoke briefly about the company transforming itself from a manufacturer of forged components to a supplier of products, systems and assemblies to defence and electric vehicles. The stock delivered 27% since our call (index 8.5%) and we retain a buy. In this report we detail further on the above opportunities based on the information that the company shared with analysts last month.
The list of top performing equity funds for the past year features a couple of unusual entries. With a return of 18-21 per cent, CPSE ETF (managed by Nippon India Mutual Fund for the government of India) and the Bharat 22 ETF (managed by ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund) are top rankers among equity funds.
This has many investors asking if they should add these passive funds to their portfolio. The portfolios of CPSE and Bharat 22 ETFs are made up of the PSU oil, energy and financial giants which are the flavour of the season. These ETFs’ costs are ultra-low because they are used as divestment vehicles. Both ETFs would also seem to be ‘value buys’ if you go by their ultra-cheap valuations. The CPSE ETF trades at a portfolio PE of 7 times and Bharat 22 ETF at about 11 times. This is a fraction of the current Nifty50 PE at over 21 times.
But does this make them worth betting on? There are five good reasons for long-term stock investors to steer clear of these ETFs.
In our Prime Equity outlook in 2022 we said “We would expect any correction triggered by global rates to take the Nifty 50 down to the 12,500 to 15,000 range. In this range, investors should deploy cash and swoop in on buying opportunities rather than develop cold feet!”.
The equity market world over did see a correction in 2022 along these lines and as geo-political factors took hold. Indian markets too, experienced a rout in the first half of the year hitting close to our predicted range at 15,200 by mid-June.
Even so, India did a lot better than its emerging market peers. The Nifty 50 closed the year on a positive note, with a modest 4% return. Simply buying the Nifty 50 would have delivered a good 18% from June until December 2022. Our own stock picks delivered well in 2022, too.
But with global recession on the cards, still high Nifty 50 and a hostile rate scenario, can 2023 be better than 2022? For Indian markets, there are some key trends that we think can play out. We look at where the Nifty 50 could be headed, and where opportunities lie.
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