Shipping Corporation of India – SELL / Exit

Citigroup research has terminated coverage on Shipping Corporation of India Limited due to lack of investor interest in the stock.

Given global shipping team’s expectations of a stablisation in charter rates over 2007 / 10E in the tanker and the dry bulk segments, we expect SCI’s earnings to decline moderately over FY07-10E.

Final recommendation for the security is Sell/Medium Risk (3M) with a target price of Rs 171. Target price for SCI is calculated by using simple average of the long-term P/BV and the current NAV. Fair-value NAV/share is Rs204. SCI’s long-term average P/BV is 0.68x. The share price trades within a fairly steady band of +/-1 standard deviations. At an FY08E P/BV of 0.68x, the fair value is Rs138. SCI’s EPS is expected to fall to Rs 30.09 and Rs 27.46 for FY 08 and FY 09 respectively.

Shriram Transport Finance – Outperformer

Shriram Transport Finance Company Limited delivered strong quarterly results on the back of strong asset growth. In addition to this, a marginal decline in the cost of funds also came in as a surprise. On the flipside, a wait and watch approach towards securitising its new CV loan book and more aggressive provisioning make us revise our estimates marginally downwards. RoAs continue to move up and we expect them to reach 3% by the end of this fiscal. UTI Securities upgrades target price to Rs. 195 and assign an ‘Outperformer’ rating to the stock.

Preowned CV disbursements grew 77.4% yoy, while new CV disbursements grew at 3.8% yoy. On a QoQ basis, new CV loan disbursements have declined by 30.5% while they have grown by 3.8% on a YoY basis.The quarter continued to witness increase in the share of institutional funds (from 67% to 78% yoy) in the borrowing book of the company. Reduction in the cost of funds, which was at 10.3% during the quarter, was a positive surprise.

Earnings per share (EPS) are expected to grow at a CAGR of 55% over the next two years. The company is expected to deliver RoA of 3% and 3.5% for FY08E and FY09E respectively and RoE of 27% and 29% for FY08E and FY09E respectively. The stock currently trades at 2.2X FY08E and 1.7X FY09E Adjusted Book Value (ABV). One year target price of Rs. 195 for the stock implying a 18% upside.

Are Fund Managers Holding More Cash ?

Our Mutual Fund Analyst researched some top mutual funds and has observed that the cash levels in portfolio have increased compared a quarter ago.

Reliance Growth fund and Reliance Equity Fund both managed by Sr. Fund Manager Sunil Singhania [On your Left] is holding is holding 9.81% and 15.11% of portfolio in Cash / Call Money. Reliance Vision fund is having 9.42% in Cash / Money Market instruments. Franklin India Flexicap fund once again managed by Sr. Fund Manager K N Siva Subramainan is also holding 9.42% of folio in Cash / Call Money. All these funds are large funds with portfilio value ranging between Rs 4,000 to Rs 3,200 crore.

Our star fund manager Prashant Jain of HDFC Equity and Top-200 has taken a different bet. Holds very low cash in HDFC Equity fund – 2.9% while in HDFC Top-200 fund it is at 9.1%. The portfolio of HDFC Equity Fund is mostly Large Cap liquid stocks and hence we guess he feels it un-necessary to hold cash.

What is common in all the above funds is, where Managers take significant exposure to Midcap stocks, they prefer to hold around 10% cash in their funds. However, if volatility continues then they are expected to shift to Large Cap otherwise they are under severe pressure of quarterly performance with their peers.

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Buy WS Industries – Sharekhan

Sharekhan Equity Research has raised the price target of WS Industries a small cap company from Rs 75 to Rs 108.

Q1FY2008 WS Industries’ (WSI) top line grew by 21% to Rs.47.7 crore, which was slightly above expectation.The profit after tax (PAT) increased by 142.4% to Rs3.95 crore; the PAT growth was higher mainly due to a decrease in both the interest cost, which dropped by 9% year on year (yoy) to Rs1.72 crore, and the depreciation cost, which fell by 4.6% to Rs9 crore yoy. A healthy order book of Rs190 crore, which is about 1.15x its FY2007 revenues.

WSI’s realty subsidiary at the current realisable value of Rs3,500 per square feet. Taking WSI’s current 59% stake in the realty venture, Sharekhan arrives at a value of Rs29 per share, which gives us a fair value of Rs108 per share of WSI. Sharekhan is positive on the stock and maintain Buy recommendation with a revised price target of Rs108.

Sical Logistics sells its auto components division

Sical Logistics has sold the manufacturing facilities and assets of its auto components division, indrad auto components, for Rs 14.69 crore to Lucas TVS, one of India’s largest auto electrical manufacturing companies.

With this asset disposal, the total funds realized by the company since the start of the dis-investment process, in 2006, have gone upto Rs 90.18 crore. The exit from the facilities of the auto components division, part of the non logistics business of the company, is in continuation of the company’s strategy to exit its non core businesses and focus on the core business of logistics. The company had been in talks with a number of global majors but zeroed in on the TVS group because of business synergies and the fit of the facilities to TVS’s growing needs.

Jai Corp at all time high on bonus bonanza

Jai Corp Limited announced before the market hours today, 8 August 2007 that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 09, August 2007 to consider issue of bonus shares. The book value per share is a healthy Rs 392.63.

The company’s current equity is Rs 8.63 crore, with 86.3 lakh outstanding shares of a face value of Rs 10.

The current market price of Rs 5061.70 discounts its Q1 June 2007 annualised EPS of Rs 157.78, by a PE multiple of 32.08.