AuthorRohit Chauhan

Blue star india – A quick look

By Rohit Chauhan
In Company analysis, Investment ideas, Uncategorized
November 2, 2006
3 Min read
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Blue star india is primarily in the commercial air conditioning and refrigeration business. The three main business segments are

1.Central air conditioning: This is the main business for blue star. It accounts for 70 %+ of the company’s revenue, has been growing at 25 % and has a pre-tax ROCE of almost 60 %. Blue star is fairly dominant in this sector and has a good market share of almost 30%. This sector is dependent on industrial demand, IT/ITES sector and retail. Lately the industrial sector, IT/ITES and retail sector have been boyant due to which Blue star has a good backlog of orders.

2.Cooling products: This comprises of Window, split A/c and other retail products such as water coolers, cold storage etc. This is a fairly competitive segment with strong brands such as carrier aircon and other vendors. This segment had a good volume growth and revenue growth of 30%. However as this segment is competitive, the pre-tax ROCE is at a respectable 15%.

3.Professional electronics and industrial equipment: This segment had a good growth last year on a small base of 60 Crs. The segment is small accounting for less than 10% of the total revenue. The pre-tax ROCE is high at almost 70%+.

Key competitive strengths
Blue star has key advantages via a strong brand in its key segments. It has a good reputation in terms of project execution and after sales service for the institutional segment. There is certain amount of lockin once a customer (especially if it is an institutional one) has selected and installed a blue star system. Subsequent orders would likely be for the same vendor. Due to high market share, blue star has certain demand and production economies of scale, which allows it to be a low cost provider. The central air conditioning segment is project driven, where project skills, experience and scale matters as the margins are fairly low (pre-tax margins were < 10 %) and hence a company has to be efficient to be a profitable business.

Problems areas
The company has performed well on most parameters such as revenue growth, NPM, ROE etc. However for the last 1-2 years, the free cash flow of the company has been dropping. The current year’s FCF was around 40 % of the operating profits. The main culprits have been account recievables and inventory. The recievables ratio has dropped from 6 to 4.9 and the inventory ratio has dropped from 9 to 7.9. The drops are not alarming and are still good in an absolute sense. However they need to be watched closely to see if the growth is not coming a high price (write-offs of bad debts and inventory later)

Valuation
Assuming (a big assumption though), the company can manage its Working capital, the Net profit can be taken as Free cash flow. The last year EPS (post split) was 5.8. The current year EPS should come be conservatively at 7. Using a DCF (with various assumptions) I would value the company roughly at 140-160 Rs/ Share. My personal opinion is that the stock is fairly priced.

Disclosure : I have owned the stock for the past few years.

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Hidden Value : Kirloskar oil engines

By Rohit Chauhan
In Company analysis, Investment ideas, Uncategorized
October 29, 2006
3 Min read
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Analysis date: Aug 2006

Kirloskar oil engines, a company from the kirloskar group has two main business segments

Engines: This business segment accounts for almost 80 % of the revenue and is the main business segment. This business caters to the farm sector, power sector, industrial machinery, Construction and material handling equipment. In addition the company has contracts/ relationships with OEM manufacturers, the armed forces and has its own service dealers and service personnels. The company has products in a wide HP ranges and has technical collaborations too. The highest volume comes from the small engines segment followed by the medium engines.

Autocomponents: This business segment accounts for the balance 20% and had an above industry growth due to capacity constraints. In addition the company has OEM relationships with some prominent companies such as maruti, sundaram clayton etc. The main products are valves and bearings

Other business: Some other minor businesses such as manufacturing grey iron castings, trading, power generation and sales (which is under review due to dropping sales)

The Company has benefitted from the recent improvement in the capital goods sector and upturn in the power sector. The period from 1996 to 2001 such low growth (20% in almost 6-7 years). Due to the improvement in the business climate the topline and margins have improved dramatically in the recent past. The company is seeing good volume growth in its core business and has also delivered good performance in the export sector which crossed 100 Crs this year.

Due to the nature of the industry (capital goods) with limited and large buyers, and due to cyclical nature the topline and margins are also cyclical. The NPM has fluctuated between as low as 2-3 % to 15 % in the recent past. I would put the average NPM at 6-7 % over a complete business cycle.

The company has become fairly efficient with the Fixed asset turnover ratios expanding from 4-5 to 7-8 in the recent past. Wcap ratios have gone through a dramatic improvement and is now almost 14. This freeing up of the capital has raised the ROE from 8-10 % to almost 30% +. In addition on a total capital base of 795 Cr, almost 500 Crs is investments.

This 500 Crs of investment at market value is almost 1000cr which translates into almost 95 Rs/ share (net of debt)

Valuation: The last year Netprofit is almost Rs 10 / share (net of exceptional items). With almost 95 Rs / share of investment, I would value the stock at approximately 350 Rs / share (max). There are various assumptions behind this valuation, namely

1. Rs 18/ share for current year’s earnings are during a cyclical high. The average earnings are more like 14-16.

2. Rs 95/ share of investments is not really realisable as a major part of this investment is in other group/ JV’s, which are unlikely to be sold off soon.

3. The company has some competitive advantage such as customer relationships, some economies of scale etc. But in the end it is in a cyclical industry with moderate to weak pricing strength and hence I would not accord the core business a PE multiple of more than 16-18.

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A few investment ideas and analysis

By Rohit Chauhan
In Company analysis, Investment ideas, Uncategorized
October 25, 2006
3 Min read
3 comments
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On running various filters in icicidirect, I was able to list a few companies which were worth further investigation.

My approach was to do a preliminary analysis and reduce the list further to a few more interesting opportunities.

I am listing the companies and my analysis. This analysis is a bit dated as I did this analysis during the aug/sept time frame and have not looked at the recent price for these companies

1. Merck : Indian subsidiary of the american MNC. The american parent has a 100% subsidiary too which could be getting all the new products from the parents portfolio (and I guess special treatment over the listed subsidiary).

The company is selling at approximately 5 times earnings after adjusting non operating income and cash on books. The company has a high ROE of 30 % and low growth of 4-5%. The actual ROE on tangible equity is 60% +.

The company has a Pharmaceuticals and chemicals business. It has recently sold its life sciences business and has approximately 3370 million on its books (Rs 200/ share).

The topline is expected to drop due to the sale of the life sciences business. The pharma business has a growth in single digits and the next years earnings could be 10-15 % over the earnings of 2005 (current year earnings are not comparable due to the sale of life sciences division)

This company is a value play. The management does not seem to be very shareholder friendly. It remains to be seen, what the management will do with the huge cash it has on its books . Will it try to buy out the indian shareholders at an unfair price like a few other MNC’s have done in past? Can happen.

I would estimate the intrinsic value conservatively at 700-800 Rs per share. However it is quite likely that the valuation gap may take a long time to close due to poor growth prospects and a management which may be indifferent to minority shareholders

2. Swaraj engines
The company showed up in my list as the PE seems to be 4-5. However after adjusting for the bonus issue, the actual PE is 14. Also the company has low growth, high debtors position and is mainly supplying to sister companies. It is a small cap company too. I do not see much value in this stock and decided to give it a pass.

The other stocks which I will detail in subsequent posts are

Grindwell norton
Revathi CP
Kirloskar oil engines
Hindustan inks
Tube investments
Neyvelli lignite
Gujarat gas

Please do not take the above list as a recommendation. This above post is just for analysis and I may or may not have invested in any of the above stocks

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A break in the posting

By Rohit Chauhan
In Uncategorized
October 16, 2006
1 Min read
1 comment
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Those of you who have visited this blog in the past , would have noticed a sudden drop in my posting.
I had consciously taken a break from posting on my blog. The break was mainly due to personal reasons and also because i felt, it was taking away too much of my spare time and distracting me from pursuing my interest in investing.
I have decided to resume my posts, although at a lower rate (may be once a week or more).

During the period from may to Oct (during my break), the market has swung from a crash to a new high of almost 13000. During that period, i was more or less inactive in terms of buying or selling. I ran a few screens and was able to find at best two decent ideas namely Kirloskar oil engines and Merck. More on these two ideas in subsequent posts.

Lastly thanks to Deepak Shenoy , for helping me fix my blog ( my line breaks had gone awry ).

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New ideas

By Rohit Chauhan
In Investment ideas, Uncategorized
July 25, 2006
1 Min read
2 comments
N

Have been away for a while and not posted for quite sometime.
However i have been doing some research for new opportunities and have been finding some good ideas.

Two companies which i am analysing further are
– Kirloskar oil engines limited
– Merck limited

Will update my analysis of these two stocks on the blog once i am done. They are fairly underpriced and look good on a quantitative basis. However i need to analyse in more depth and come to a firm conclusion

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Analysing the assumptions

By Rohit Chauhan
In Investment process, Uncategorized
May 3, 2006
3 Min read
9 comments
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One approach to analysing stocks, bonds or even real estate is to look at the valuations and figure out the assumptions built into the price. It helps to analyse these assumptions and check if you buy into them. It also helps if one has a good sense of history and asset values in the past.
Let me take the example of the top tier IT companies like infosys, Wipro etc. These companies sell at a PE of 30+. So in effect the market seems to be ‘assuming’ the following
a) return on capital of 40%+ for the next 10 years
b) A compounded growth of 18%+ for the next 10 years
c) Maintenance of margins in the 20%+ range

Now it may be possible that these companies would achieve some of these expectations. But to justify their valuations they have to achieve all of them. Ofcourse the top tier IT companies are atleast doing fairly well and may even deserve a high valuation. One can find a number of mid-cap and small cap companies which are riskier, but valued at even higher valuations. The current earnings growth is being projected for quite a few of these companies well into the future. The same is being done for commodity companies like cement, steel too.
Lets take another example outside the stock market. Lets look at the current investment favourite ‘real estate’. Now if you believe like me that the value of any asset is the sum of all cash flows to eternity, an apartment selling at 60 lacs for an area of 2000 sqft would have the following assumption (3000 rs / sqft is not a very high rate these days)

a) 6% rental yields on the capital invesment of 60 lacs.
b) Growth in the yield (read rentals) at around 8-9% per annum
c) Terminal sale of the property after 30 years with a 9% appreciation per annum, with a discount of 10% for the older property.
What all of the above means is that
a) rental of Rs 30000 per month
b) A hike in the rental of around 8-9% per annum
c) The property will sell for 7.2 crs after 30 years (net present value is 95 lacs with an inflation of 7% per annum)

So for an apartment to justify a return of 8-9% total return at the current prices, the above should hold true. Whether it does or not, depends on ones view of the above ‘expectations’ in terms of rentals
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‘I don’t know’

By Rohit Chauhan
In Investing Philosophy, Uncategorized
April 25, 2006
3 Min read
1 comment
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Ask any analyst, market commentator, investor or your friend on the future direction of the market and they will have a wide variety of views ranging from totally pessimistic to wildly optmisitic. Most will also have very plausible reasons to back up their viewpoints.

In reality, I doubt anyone can consistently time the market (and there is enough evidence to back it up). True some people can get it right sometimes, but I personally have never tried it as I know for sure that I will not get it right.

My approach to this question is ‘I don’t know’. I am not sure what will happen in the future. However that does not mean being blind to the present situation and doing nothing about. On the contrary I have some crude approaches to resolving this problem.

For individual stocks I typically maintain a valuation band (and not a price band). For example, if I think a business has very strong competitive advantage and will do very well, I tend to accord it higher valuations. As a specific case I can cite marico. Marico as a business was valued at a PE of around 10-12 in 2003, when I looked at it for the first time. I conservatively valued it at 20-22 at that time. Since then marico has done very well and may have improved its competitive position. As a result I have bumped up my valuation band to 25-27. The advantage I see in this approach is that I do not fixate on the price. Price is a function of the current earnings and the PE ratio, which in turn would depend on a variety of condition. By looking at a valuation band, I can assess the company’s competitive position and decide whether the current price looks overvalued or not.

Ofcourse the above approach is not perfect. A better approach would be to do a complete DCF analysis from scratch without any assumptions. However it is very time consuming and may not be feasible for me every time.

For the broader market, I have an even cruder method. I track the earnings growth, dividend yield and ROE of the market as a whole. I tend to treat a market PE of 20 as trigger to start investigating as to why the market should not be considered to be overvalued. A PE of 20 does not necessarily indicate an overvalued market. This number has to be seen in context of the other numbers I spoke of earlier. But at this point, I start analysing further and also look at reducing my holdings.

All of the above is hardly scientific and may appear as very crude. However I try not to be too smart in selling. I try to follow buffett’s advice (paraphrased) ‘Buy at such an attractive price, that selling becomes an easy decision’

In the end, my approach is to accept that I don’t know the future of the market and need to manage my emotions (greed at present!!). So a mechanical approach although sub-optimal works well for me.

As an aside, Mr market is current in complete euphoria with the kind of oversubscription for RPL and sun TV IPOs.

Great time for businesses to raise capital from the market !!

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Oil and gas industry – Refineries

By Rohit Chauhan
In Industry analysis, Uncategorized
April 21, 2006
6 Min read
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This is a complex industry with some of the largest public companies in india. It would be difficult to cover the entire industry in detail in a single post. I would however try to cover the critical components of the industry and try to explore one of the subsets of the industry in this post

The industry can be roughly be split into 3-4 groups

Refining companies – This would include standalone refining companies like RPL, MRPL.chennai petroleum etc and other vertically integrated companies like IOC, HPCL and BPCL which have their own refineries. Refineries are capital intensive businesses with high economies of scale, low differentiation in the product and competitive advantage being mainly with the low cost producer. In addition refineries are cyclical in nature with their margins driven by the price of crude

Marketing companies – There are no stand-alone marketing companies in india. Most of the companies like IOC, BPCL HPCL and now reliance are a combination of marketing companies (through retail outlets) and refineries supplying the marketing companies.

Marketing companies have more pricing power, some level of branding and less cyclical in nature. However in india as the retail price is controlled by the government, companies having the marketing division (HPCL, BPCL, IOC) etc do not have control on their pricing and typically have to bear losses which at best is mitigated through oil bonds.

Gas – These include companies like GAIL, Gujarat gas, Indraprastha gas etc. This is one the fastest growing sub-sectors in the oil and gas industry. With India trying to reduce its reliance on oil, there is a lot of focus on switching to the gas fuel.

In addition pricing for gas is not tightly controlled by the government. As a result most of the companies have fair amount of pricing power. As the industry is characteristed by entry barriers in the form of pipelines and licenses in specific markets. At the national level the market has been controlled by GAIL. However the government has opened the sector to compeitition and the common access guidelines provide access to the national gas pipelines controlled by GAIL.

The sector is however growing rapidly with a lot growth coming from industrial consumers and some cities switiching to CNG for vehicles.

Lubricants – These are some standalone lube companies like castrol. However for most of the companies this is an additional product which is produced and supplied through the same supply chain (Petrol pumps) or through retail outlets.

This sector is characterised by high competition with the industry growth dependent on the growth of the automotive sector. The last 2-3 years have been better in terms of the growth. However the sector characterised by poor pricing.

In the rest of the post I would cover the refining sector. I will cover the other sectors in future posts.

Porter’s 5 factor Industry analysis for refining companies

Entry barriers

The industry has moderate barriers characterised by economies of scale. Larger refineries with latest technologies which can process varying types of crude tend to have higher GRM (gross refining margins). For ex: the new RPL refinery is to have the latest technology with the capability to process heavy and sour crude oil(HSCO) and as a result could have margins as high as 10 $ per barrel.

Rivalry Determinant

The rivalry in the industry has been low till now as the industry was tighlty regulated by the government. The level competition would increase in the future, with reliance and other MNC becoming more aggressive

Supplier power

Supplier power is high as the net margins are strongly dependent on the price of the crude. Due to crude price volatility and supply risks, a lot of the indian companies are integrating backwards into E&P activities

Buyer power

Not too critical for most companies as refining operations are a part of the complete supply chain, with the refining operations supplying the product to the marketing company. However in case of standalone companies (which may no longer apply) long term contracts have to be signed with the marketing companies. The margins in such cases are dependent on such long term contracts.

Substititute product

Although gas , solar power etc exist as substitiutes , none of them are big enough to impact the demand of the petroleum products.


Company details

The key companies in this sector are MRPL, Kochi refineries, RPL (IPO), Chennai petroleum and Bongaigaon Refinery. Most these companies have benifitted with the high crude prices and are currently operating a high capacity utilisations. A few thoughts on these companies are below

RPL – the major points are coevered in this article. In addition, the pricing of the IPO at 60 would be on the higher side and as suggested in the article would account for the positives of the project being priced in. As an aside, considering the good deal which reliance is getting , I would like to look at RIL (it seems after all the demergers, the cross holding creation has started again in the new companies).

In addition, chevron has picked a stake too.

MRPL – The company has been turned around in the last 2 years and has now become profitable. It is now running at high capacity utilisation 119% (10 mmt capacity) . The financial numbers are much better now (see here) and the company has turned around after receiving capital from the parent (ONGC). The company is now valued at a PE of 9. Considering that the petroleum prices are at a high and any further expansion of earnings would come with further increase in refinery capacity, I think the company is fairly valued ( most of refinery companies are experiencing a cyclical high in terms of earnings).

Bongaigaon Refinery – This is a small refinery (2.1 MMT) with majority holder being IOC. It is running at fairly high capacity utilisation (100% +). The company is valued at a normalised PE of around 10 (based on average of last 5 years of earnings). Again the last year’s earnings seem to be at a cyclical high (GRM – gross refining margins were almost at 10 dollars last) and this year there has been a 50% drop in profits. Also further expansion will come only through capacity expansion, so the earnings / Free cash flows could be subdued for some time. However among all the refinery companies, this one is worth further analysis.

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Companies/ industry with falling pricing

By Rohit Chauhan
In Industry analysis, Uncategorized
April 14, 2006
2 Min read
4 comments
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There are industries with stable pricing power like FMCG companies (to a certain extent), cylical pricing power like cement, steel and other commodity companies which depends on the demand and supply conditions and then there are companies which have a business model where the price is always dropping. A few industries, which come to mind are the computer industry (Dell, HP etc), semiconductor industry, memory (moser baer) and even electronics.

These industries are not even like airlines where there is a certain cyclicality of pricing. In the above industries, there is a relentless race to the bottom. Its almost a given. A PC now is around half the price of a PC in 2000 (maybe lesser), but it is 5 times or more powerful. So you have a scenario where the product keeps getting better and the price keeps falling.

So even when the revenue is increasing, the margins and profits may be shrinking. So what does it mean for an investor?

  1. To be competitive all participants in the industry must constantly spend huge sums on new technologoies, equipments and other cost reduction options. So effectively the earnings are overstated for these companies, as depreciation is way to lower than the obsolence in the industry.

  2. Due to poor pricing power, any drop in the demand has a severe impact in margins (see samsung results here). Companies like Intel which have a monopoly in the processor business have also taken huge hits when the demand has dropped.

  3. Sudden shifts in technology can destory the exisiting product lines and put the company at risk. Even small shifts can hurt these companies badly (nokia got hurt and lost market share when the preference moved to clamshell phones in 2004/2005.)


In the end I would value these companies at low multiples if I can forsee the future of the company and figure out that the company would do well for quite some time.

As an example, look at Moser baer. This company has grown a lot, but at the same time operates in a falling price environment and needs constant investment into capital equipment. As result the company has had to add capital to the business. I am not sure if this business would really have any free cash flow.

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A good idea carried too far

By Rohit Chauhan
In General thoughts, Uncategorized
April 10, 2006
2 Min read
3 comments
A

1991-1992: Harshad mehta boom
Story: Liberalisation

1994 – IPO boom

1999-2000: IT stock boom

2003 – ? : The india story .

‘India will grow at above average rates ( > 6 %) for the next few years and more. India has the requisite demographics, savings rate and the right condition for growth’

The underlying idea behind each boom was true and maybe sound. But typically the idea got carried too far. I am reminded of this quote from benjamin graham (paraphrased)

‘ It is not the bad idea which does you in, it is the good idea carried too far’

So you have a boom in the stock market, the commodities market, gold market, real estate market. Read somewhere that property in mumbai is more expensive than manhattan !!

Maybe it is ‘different’ this time …who knows ?

I am reminded of the following statement from warren buffett

The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large dosesof effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities – that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.

— warren buffett , letter to shareholders 2000

So maybe there are people who are smart to know when the market will turn. I don’t think I can do that. Better to hold back or if the froth in the market increases, start selling.

another indicator of the bull market – in any party or evening out with friends and family, i keep hearing of the fantastic real estate, IPO or stock tips which should not be missed. prefer to keep my mouth shut in such groups. Who wants to listen to a party pooper ! surprising bit is that no one talked about stocks in 2002-2003 .

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