- Macrotech Developers (Lodha): This real estate developer’s stock outperformed the Nifty 500 index by over 20% in the past month. It is also one of the top picks of foreign brokerage house Jefferies in the real estate sector.
On June 23, the company announced its foray into the Bengaluru residential market by acquiring a 100% stake in G Corp Homes. Macrotech will be launching a housing project of 1.3 million sq ft area in the next 6-12 months in Bangalore. According to its press release, this Bengaluru-based project has a sales potential of roughly Rs 1,200 crore. Mumbai Metropolitan Region and Pune are the main markets of the Lodha Group and this will be the third major city it will be entering into. It will be competing with players like Prestige Estates and Sobha who already have a strong presence in the city. Macrotech’s stock rose by 5% since this announcement. The company additionally plans to launch 8.7 million sq ft (msf) worth of projects in Mumbai and Pune in FY23, with a sales potential of over Rs 13,000 crore.
However, real estate consultant Anarock said there was a 15% QoQ fall in home sales across the top seven cities in India in Q1FY23. The rise in property prices and interest rate hikes have impacted the sentiments of prospective homeowners. Nearly 75% of Macrotech’s homes in volume terms are taken on a mortgage. Hence, if the home loan interest rates rise beyond 8.5% p.a. from 7.5-7.9% p.a., its sales bookings could be impacted in FY23 and beyond.
- Reliance Industries: The oil refinery stock fell 7% in trade on Friday, one of the top losing stocks, after the government imposed an export duty on petrol, diesel, and ATF (aviation turbine fuel). An excise duty of Rs 6 per litre on petrol and ATF, and Rs 13 per litre on diesel has been imposed. It will be interesting to see how the company plans its earnings as this means private oil players will be paying an additional $40.6 per barrel in duties.
The stock had also fallen on Tuesday after reports that the company’s plans of acquiring Boots UK, a pharmacy retailer, fell through after Wallgreens Boots Alliance decided to not sell the business. Reliance wanted to acquire Boots UK’s pharmacy retail chain as it was looking for growth opportunities in global markets and made a bid for its UK pharma retail business. The company says that no third party has been able to bid adequately for Boots. Boots UK was valued at 7 billion euros and Reliance made a bid for 5-6 billion euros, according to reports.
The company’s telecom business recently appointed Akash Ambani, aged 30, as the new Chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm after Mukesh Ambani stepped down on June 27. Akash Ambani was involved with Reliance Jio since its inception as its Chief Strategy Officer earlier. He was also involved in Jio’s acquisitions related to digital space like the acquisition of Saavn - a music platform, American tech firm Radisys, among others, according to reports. The major challenge for the new Chairman would be unlocking the potential of the digital business and steering Jio to an expected IPO.
- Hikal: This pharma company’s stock has been highly volatile this week. It rose 5.4% on Monday after the Bombay High Court directed the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) to grant permission to re-start manufacturing activities at the company's Taloja manufacturing unit. Previously on April 22, MPCB had ordered Hikal to shut its Taloja unit due to non-compliance issues. The Taloja manufacturing unit contributed Rs 260 crore or 15% of total revenues in FY21. In an eventful week for Hikal, Smallcap World Fund sold a 2.03% stake in the company worth Rs 62 crore on Wednesday. Following this, the stock fell over 4%.
The company’s stock price is on a downtrend since hitting its all-time high in July 2021. In the past month, the stock fell over 25%. With such a steep fall in its share price, it comes up in the screener that lists stocks with big falls from their 52-week highs.
Hikal gets 61% of its revenues from the pharmaceutical segment and the remaining 39% from the crop protection segment. While revenue from its pharma segment rose marginally by 3% YoY to Rs 308 crore in Q4FY22, crop protection’s revenue fell 17% YoY. In the Q4FY22 investor presentation, Executive Chairman of Hikal, Jai Hiremath, said “we expect FY23 to be a challenging year, one of consolidation, and the following year we will return to sustainable and profitable growth”.
However, brokerages still have a positive outlook on the company. As a result, it shows up in this screener which lists stocks with high analyst ratings and have an upside of at least 20% from their current price. In addition, mutual funds increased their holdings in this company last month.
- Mahindra CIE Automotive: This auto component maker’s stock gained more than 35% in the last three months. The company is one of the top forging players globally with its customers spread across Europe and India. According to a report from brokerage Geojit, most of the company’s global customers are outperforming their industry’s average revenue growth. This shows that the company has a good pipeline of orders in place. According to Geojit's report, the current order book is likely to remain strong till October. An increase in business with existing customers, and the shifting of the production centre to India to enhance exports is good value-addition for the company.
Auto companies are facing a shortage of semiconductor chips for the past year now, and despite these issues, Mahindra CIE’s European business margin came in at 10.2% in Q4FY22. The improvement in margins is likely to continue on a YoY basis with a revenue growth estimated at 14% CAGR over CY 21-23. The company is focused on bringing in a favourable product mix to improve profitability, especially in the EV market. The stock has an average brokerage target price of Rs 236, implying a 20% upside.
- UltraTech Cement: This cement stock fell 37.4% from its 52-week high till June 17 and since then it has risen 8.3% till Jun 30. The stock’s rise is due to brokerages like ICICI Direct and Motilal Oswal having a positive outlook on the company. The brokerages also expect cement demand to grow in the next 3-5 years. IDBI Capital expects the demand for cement to rise at a 6.3% CAGR over FY 22-25. It also believes UltraTech is best placed to see long-term growth, and is trading at attractive valuations. The company also shows up on this screener with stocks in the buy zone based on days traded at current PE and P/BV (price-to-book value).
Recently the company announced a capacity expansion of 22.6 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) at a capex of Rs 12,886 crore. It expects to complete this capacity expansion by FY25. This management expects an EV/tonne (enterprise value/tonne) of $76, meaning the company would be spending $76 to set up one tonne of cement capacity. According to ICICI Direct, the company’s capex allocation efficiency is the best among its peers, as the industry average EV/tonne is $125-130/tonne.
This new capacity expansion will take the company’s total India grey cement capacity to 159.2 mtpa in FY25 from the current 119.9 mtpa, implying a CAGR of 9.9% over FY22-25. The management expects demand for cement to be driven by the housing and road infrastructure segments in India. However, the risk of lower demand and a sharp increase in input costs remains, which may lead to lower cash flows available for its capacity expansion plans.
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