Month: October 2006

Mumbai’s leading Broking firm, Prabhudas Lilladhar has put a BUY recommendation on the company’s stock at Rs194.

Their team met ITC company officials before writing the research report. Key highlights of the report are as follows. Increase in tobacco prices not a key concern for ITC. In non-cigarette’s FMCG, Foods, LifeStyle Retailing and Stationery to be key growth drivers. Agri trading business is expected to show a robust performance. Capacity additions in Paperboard.

ITC is expected to report an EPS of Rs7.1 and Rs8.3 for FY2007 and FY2008. Prabhudas research says @ Rs194 it is quoting at 26.2X FY07Eand 22.4X FY08E which is wrong. However, if you calculate on the expected EPS, it is actually quoting at 27.32XFY07 and 23.37XFY07. The entire report on ITC can be accessed here. [PDF]

DalalStreet.Biz Recommendation: I maybe wrong but for me the stock looks expensive at Rs194 levels and wouldn’t buy at this level.

The management of HCL Technologies Limited is positive on the prospects of their company. You might have observed, HCL Tech lagged behind its peers in earnings during 2003 through 2005, mainly because of the vertical nice they were into. In the past 2 years they have expanded into every possible domain from Application Development to IT Infrastructure Management(Another big outsourcing opportunity, where HCL Tech is the leader).

HCL Technologies enjoyed poor PE discounting because of the fact their quarterly earnings were not consistent. The restructuring in the past two years has streamlined their earnings and you can expect HCL Tech to report QoQ growth rates just like Infosys or TCS. The stock is likely to be re-rated if it consistently grows over 8-10% QoQ and I expect an EPS of Rs33 for the FY ending June 2007. At current discounting of 20X, the one year price target is Rs660 for the stock. However, on re-rating, I would expect the stock to quote around Rs750, 25% upside from current levels.

Disclosure: I hold HCL Tech in my folio.