HSBC’s Duggal Buying Defensive Growth Stocks

India’s biggest bull, Sanjeev Duggal a Sr. Fund Manager with HSBC AMC who was the first to ask his investors to cash out in December-2007 has said that India is all set for long term growth and is reducing cash position to BUY into defensive growth stocks.

Mr. Duggal said,

Solid domestic consumption, favourable demographics and increasing investment in infrastructure remain the key growth drivers for India. The Indian economy is also less vulnerable to external shocks than other economies in Asia because exports account for less than 15% of the country’s GDP.While macro conditions are expected to remain tight in the near term, most of the bad news should have been discounted.

As the recent interest rate hikes need time to take effect, inflation may rise further before peaking later this year, and then fall.

We have already initiated coverage on HSBC Equity Fund through SIP options and consider top-ups on market corrections.

EIH Oberoi Hotels – Results

EIH, the owner of India’s second most popular and oldest brand of Oberoi Hotels reported a topline growth of 10%, which is in line with the industry. The 15% rise in salary cost has been the primary reason for lower operating margin of 30%. Q1 FY09 PAT was at Rs 380 mn a 4% growth YoY.

Mumbai continue to be healthy. We expect revenues to get a boost once the Trident, BKC at Mumbai starts operations by the beginning of Q4FY09. The opening of the Trident BKC will be the primary trigger for the company as nearly Rs. 8 bn has been spent as capex on this 440 key property.

For the full year, EIH is expected to report an EPS of Rs 5.8 almost flat growth compared to previous year.

Who owns Indian Capital Market ?

Latest shareholding data for June 2008 shows a continued drop in foreign ownership of the Indian markets. FII (FIIs+ADR/GDR) share of the BSE-500 now stands at 17.4% (17.8% in March and 19.27% in June 2007). Foreign ownership levels are now back to Dec-2004 levels.

This time its not the company promoters who are increasing their stakes, but it is the Indian Insurance Companies who have raised their ownership level from 4.1% to 4.4% and to some extent retailers and HNIs have also bought seeing their stake go to 9.24% from 9.0%. (more…)

Contrarian views on IT EoU

I thought of sharing this Contrarian Views on Indian IT Export Oriented Companies – Infosys Technologies, Wipro, TCS, Satyam, and HCL Technologies as released by Edelweiss Research. The environment is still difficult and any optimism on guidance outperformance that investors may have had in the middle of Q1FY08 has tempered, we see select Indian companies doing well reiterating their FY09 guidance after a not too enthusing Q1FY09. (more…)