Magical 90 mins as Prof
@AswathDamodaran
distilled his decades of experience into a master-class and then enriched us with his thinking as I lay out questions across the varying aspects of finance and his personal life!Check out the entire interview here
After close to 2 decades in Kotak, yesterday was my last day. Memories flashed by, as I reflected on many ups & downs, & how I have grown & re-invented myself every 4/5yrs, thanks to people, process & culture at Kotak
Privileged to have the fortune of compounding investor wealth over the last many years and humbled by the recognition 3rd year in a row of being amongst the Top Fund Managers for long term risk-adjusted performance. Many thanks 🙏
Privileged to lead the team at Birla MF as Co-CIO and Head (Equity).
It is an enormous responsibility of managing trust of millions of our unit holders across funds-shall endeavour to focus on their long term interest,by growing their wealth in a responsible,disciplined manner!
Almost 1 in 2 companies now have a trailing earnings yield of <2% (PE >50x)! From demonetisation time, the percent of companies trading at >50PE has moved from 10% to almost 50% now.
Universe is any company that has been part of Top 500 since 2001. (Source: ABSL AMC)
Had the privilege to present to CFA Society for practitioners in August this year-spoke on 8 mega themes spanning multiple decades & how it may shape investment ahead
The Big Picture – A Synthesists’ perspective on few Mega Trends | Harish... via
@YouTube
Privileged to have aided in compounding of investor wealth over many years and humbled by recognition - 4th time in a row of being amongst the Top Fund Managers for long term risk adjusted returns. 🙏
Privileged to have the fortune of compounding investor wealth over the last many years and humbled by the recognition 3rd year in a row of being amongst the Top Fund Managers for long term risk-adjusted performance. Many thanks 🙏
It is quite astonishing to see formalisation of economy. In Fy19, there were 7496 cos having turnover > 500cr, in Fy 23 per GSTN there are 11,731 cos having turnover > 500cr! Almost 50% more companies!! Just for context there are approx 90k cos in US with turnover > 100mn$!
Capex chronicles - a thread on India Inc Capex across last 2 decades and 4 key trends
1. Trend
#1
- headline capex flatlining....Listed India Inc capex (incl M&A) has flatlined across most of last decade, with capex to sales falling to 6-7% from 11%.
Since lockdown,Indian power demand has fallen by 25%.In contrast,feedback suggest about 10-12% electricity demand drop in Europe and about 7% demand drop in US in prev week. This clearly reflects Indian lock down is perhaps stricter & extracting a large economic cost (source:CS)
NIFTY50 earnings yield exceeds bond yield for the first time since demonetisation.More imp, 30 of the 50
NIFTY50 stocks have a forward earnings yield of >6%. Using trailing earnings for a
larger universe, 484 stocks of the top 1,000 universe currently yield >6% (Source: ISec)
Fuel prices in India - almost everyone has an opinion on what govts must do! Wading to this territory is like walking into a political minefield- attempting the same with data...hopefully adds to understanding of the issue
6 lakh crore (annually over the last decade) became 7 lakh crores last year - and now last trailing 12 months capex of listed India Inc has moved past 8 lakh crores as well 🤞
Even as NSE Smallcap 100 index price is 7.5% lower than Jan 2018 highs,market cap of NSE Smallcap index is higher by 30%.Generally index price & market cap move in tandem,this divergence is possibly due to massive changes in index (over 3 years,163 cos hv been added n deleted)!
I wish authors like Pankaj Mishra look at such data before writing articles on how India is furiously spewing out carbon -thr is a limit to hypocritical virtue signalling!
Amazing that there is not one data-point on claims that India is furiously consuming energy n polluting the world!Data on energy intensity suggest that despite lower GDP and energy levels on per capita or aggregate terms,India's energy intensity is lower than even US, since 90s.
A thread on key changes over a block of 5 years (2014-19) compared to previous 5 years (2009-13) , key avenues for govt inflows and key spends by govt. Please note these are not actual inflows/ spends, but difference in inflows/spends
As India Inc scales up over time, number of listed companies with quarterly PAT greater than 100cr/250cr/500cr/1000cr also creeps up. There was just 1 company in 2002 with quarterly PAT exceeding 1000cr, now there are 70!
Something to reflect on - average salary (based on IT returns filed) has been broadly flat for now 5 years for those earning INR350k annual salary and above, and this during period where govt pay commission etc were hiked significantly....
(Source: IIFL Research)
Update on listed India Inc capex trends paints an encouraging trend. At 7.5sh lakh crores, listed India capex has crossed 6shlakh crore mark seen over the last 10+ years. Cash flows remain good, which means chances of this trend continuing is likely...
Recently, Indian cos market cap crossed 4tn$-US market cap crossed 4tn$ (now 45tn$)in 1991, when its GDP was close to 6tn$ (now 27tn$) and its annual profit pool was close to 275bn$ (now 3.2tn$)- while for India, GDP at 3.6tn$ & annual profit pool approx 170bn$
From 450+ railway passengers for every domestic air passenger in 2001 to about 50 railway passengers for every domestic air passenger (till June 2022) - amazing transformation over last 20+ years. Interesting to see how GFC impacted the ratio, while COVID accelerated the trend
Easily, one of the most comprehensive papers I have read in recent times - "The Rate of Return on Everything -1870-2015" - where they painstakingly compile total wealth composition of 16 countries & real rate of returns over 150 odd years...
Size effect in Indian markets - micro caps (501-1000 companies by market cap) share of Top 1000 profit pool and marketcap share has seen a big divergence from Sep 23 - for first time in 25 years - microcap share of market cap > earnings share of Top 1000 earnings
Despite, ARKK generating mammoth 40% CAGR on a 5 year basis in its flagship ARK Innovation fund, the average investor into the fund is under-water as bulk of monies moved in after the superb performance in 2020!
H/t:
@RobinWigg
How important were the reforms in 90s? This chart possibly highlights it the best, as labour productivity from declining trend over last 2 decades moves up as opportunities open up, and India moved away from license raj
Analysis of distribution of measure of capital efficiency(RoE) of listed India Inc over last 2 decades
-stark diff b/w number of cos that make atleast 10% RoE pre GFC and post that
(Total cos in this exercise varies from 1750-2250 across each of 20 years)
Thread on govt claims on our consumption!As citizens,imp to see how our consumer spends get paid to govt in form of taxes.While there r analysis on total tax paid to govt etc on fuel/car etc,idea is to look at total aggregate private consumption & see center+state indirect taxes!
Sell off by FII in Indian equities in last 4 months now similar to outflows seen in March 2020.On 12 mo rolling basis, thr hv been only 2 other instances(2008 &2018)whr FII selling has been on a higher quantum than current outflow (Source: CSDL/NSDL data, last data till 25 jan).
Must read paper for those managing money - the need to evaluate selling strategies. The paper is titled - Selling Fast and Buying Slow, & looks at 750+ portfolios of professional managers'trades from 200-2016 and analyses 2+mn buying/selling decisions. One key takeaway:👇
Amazed by real Indian wage growth over last 40 yrs
1.Manufacturing had highest growth rates over 40 years & even post GFC, higher than even services!
2. Construction real wage growth is negative over 40 years,if one started out at Rs 100 in 1980,one got Rs 91 real wages in 2018!
Interesting stat that I picked from multiple annual reports of RBI....while we keep focusing on 10 year yields etc , from govt PoV, what matters is cost of their outstanding debt, and that is pretty sticky sadly. (Last column)
Over last 6 months,India’s share of world market cap (4.2%)has zoomed past India’s share of world GDP (likely 3.75% in CY24). Given long growth runway, India’s share of world GDP is slated to rise meaningfully over coming decade,but starting point of valuations also do matter🤔
Share of India market cap to world market cap broadly tracks India's GDP share in the world. Of course, this is just a relative valuation indicator, on a proxy of market-cap to GDP on a relative scale
While there is a lot of focus on foreign reserves (and rightfully so, in its ability to help during shocks), on a sustainable basis, what matters is Net International Investment Position (NIIP), - ie whether a country is a net creditor or borrower to world.
Over the last 13 years, net inflows into India. Equity cash market segment by individuals is practically Nil! In an environment which has generally been conducive for equities (lower volatility, lower drawdown instances)-household participation into direct equities is very low
A decade ago, the top 20 firms accounted for 40% of all profits…
Today they account for about 80% of all profits. How did they do this?
Watch Saurabh Mukherjea & Nandita Rajhansa of
@MarcellusInvest
talk to
@SharadRaghavan
ThePrint
#QuarterMaster
Extremely low odds of instant gratification vs significantly higher payoffs of delayed wealth creation!
Fascinated by lottery sales explosion in Kerala(last year was approx 12000cr).Over 79 million lottery tickets sold every week in the state which has a population of just 33 mn
We were all so awe-struck whn Tesla announced that it took 12 months frm ground breaking to commercial sales in China!Something similar is now happening in India whr one of largest chip mfg comes live within 15 months frm ground breaking!The times are a-changin!
@neelkanthmishra
A global pandemic that has impacted services sector globally far more than mfg sector,amazing to see India's net software exports declining by 1% YoY in 1Q FY21,a period of max lockdown in India.Trully hats off to mgmt and employees of IT services to pull this off!👍
@nasscom
"I hate losing more than even I wanna win!"-Billy Beane in Moneyball.
In many ways,investment is abt making lesser errors of commission thn fretting over opportunities missed-fatal mistakes tht blowup will mean tht one may not be arnd when opportunities present themselves again!
In dollar terms, drawdown of almost all markets (excluding China) now around 20%. In USD terms, current drawdown of MSCI India not very different from Nasdaq100 or Russel 3000 ...🤔
Few charts on extent of re-rating seen as we go down the curve over a 3 year period. fy20-24 has seen strong earnings across the board (for various reasons), however multiple expansion has explained 50-70% of aggregate marketcap gains in small and micro cap segment.
This “collectible” of all KotakMF team wishes shall be my North Star - as I move forward, to build and harness positive energy in our lives, and by doing right for our conscience & our investors in the long term
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
– Lao Tzu
Possibly dream job of our parents generation was a PSU job, in my generation to be a professional and in this cohort of young Indians -to be a founder & a job giver. It has taken generations to embrace risk taking as a mindset,n this has to cherished, not looked down upon!!!
Casual reading of this chart by
@MilanV
spins 2 popular narratives of day - 1 capture by few cos(regulatory capture,invincible moats etc) that they become larger.2 In polarised mkt,where few performing,so follows only handful co worth investing! Alternative narratives possible?
This is an incredible statistic: Just 20 companies earned nearly *70%* of corporate India's profits in 2019, up from just 14% three decades ago via
@TheEconomist
With many new age Indian biz coming to list, thr is a healthy debate in terms of valuing such biz. I present a framework to evaluate such biz from prism of consumer surplus
Hyperbole of contrast narratives!
Firstly,compare notional wealth of one to income of workers.Then,draw a logic that formers' wealth is due to exploration of latter.If only a first gen entrepreneur who started delivery biz less than 5 years ago has such power over 300k+ workers!
Zomato's founder is worth an estimated $650m after the firm's IPO. Zomato's 161,000 'delivery partners' know little of that, earning Rs20 for a 4km delivery + Rs5 for each km extra.
#gigeconomy
#India
One of the most exhaustive reads on climate change from Indian perspective, on credit, opportunities, challenges, impact on economy, lives n livelihood - RBI recent report on Currency & Finance.
Few charts that caught my eye... steady rise in temperature,more so in last decade
It amazes me the extent of difference in productivity of human capital in PSU cos (salaries to GVAat 54%) & private(salaries to GVA at 34%).To put in context,GVA of private cos(non -financial) is approx 6x GVA of public cos, while salary bill of Pvt is 1.25x wage bill of PSU cos
Capex to depreciation -one of lowest readings in last few years - effectively for MSCI constituents (index for which we have one of longer time series) - aggregate capex is now lower than annual charge of depreciation)
(Source: Bloomberg)
Initial signs that capex is moving beyond maintenance capex to growth mode for Top 1000 companies- ideally should come with both strong top line growth and stronger capex growth…but when animal spirits do take off, just shows extent of how large private capex cycle can be…🤞
Ultimately share price returns mirror ROIC, and across geographies India stand out as a country having one of the highest RoIC metrics...this data and lot more insights from
“Once upon a time…” - so began many a story- for the saver, it typically would involve showing SENSEX chart over past 40-50 years and how equities create wealth. Fast fwd, and you get BSE SME IPO index crossing SENSEX levels and more in less than 3 years!
While incessant FII selling is making headlines these days,it is important to zoom out n see big picture. Plotted the cumulative FII flows since GFC bottom to Indian equities & all EM - ex India.Even as FII pulled out of most EM in 2014-17,they persisted with India & "topped up"
Early in my career, had chat with veteran sell side(SS)
Me: if you didn’t know current prices of stock, I bet the target prices would be very different from ones that you publish
SS: fair enough, if I hide the benchmark weights, I bet your portfolio wd look very different too! 😜
Superb read on the failure of first devaluation of INR in 60s - and how it played a role in mistrust between India and western powers - and consequently how USSR embedded itself into our economic & defence priorities in 70s and 80s...
The big re-allocation to equities globally is at a pace never seen before! The last bar in 2021 is annualised run-rate of the last 2.5 months flows to equities. This is almost unbelievable - rate of almost 2% of world market cap, being re-allocated to equities,if this sustains!!!
Even as Indian markets and market caps keep scaling highs in nominal terms, in gold terms- it had reached levels seen in 2008 before retracing from those levels
Problem of plenty - cash flow from operations post capex investment in Plant, Property & Equipment (PPE) for listed India Inc has now jumped to 6 lakh crores from 1sh lakh crore in 2019. Even after increasing PPE Capex, can this lead to heightened M&A in an era of "plenty" ? 🤔
Truly a stark contrast this time around, when one looks at inflation across the world across time-with continued reliance on energy imports etc,Indian inflation wd hv been on boil yet again. Have easing up of some of our infrastructure/capacity constraints contributed to this? 🤔
Doubling time of profits pools alongside market cap of various market segments over the last 25 years. On an average, large cap profits have doubled every 72 months, while mid to micro caps have doubled approx every 63-66 months.
A thread of threads written by me in 2020.
' Writing clarifies thought'- while had known this for a while,was only in 2020, that I put it in practice on a public platform like Twitter,so here goes
1. Interview with Prof
@AswathDamodaran
& my takeaways
Cash-in-Circulation (CiC) dynamics- thr is a myth that RBI has been printing new money significantly causing CiC to trend up,or people hoarding cash etc. With RBI annual report out,we hv detailed data on both CiC (denomination wise) as well as printing of notes from mint.
Too much 'intellectualisation' of Gold v/s BTC! BTC is just a play on greater fool theory - I buy now, can I find a buyer 10% higher half an hour from now? All the story buildup as alternative to central bank etc is just a facade to build a narrative.
Despite the recent selling by FII in Indian equities, FII are sitting on significant gains. Plotted the stock to flow ratio of FII (cumulative stake of FII in BSE500) to cumulative flows since 2000 (basis custodian data)
Earnings growth of India Inc has been constant bugbear over last decade,the low base of earnings provides strong hope while cynical analyst believes India Inc has just lost its mojo!As they say,India never fails to disappoint both it's optimists or pessimists, some context.....
Interesting visualisation of growth of countries of years needed to hit various trillion $ milestones after it crossed 1tn$, as projected by IMF WEO.
The legends not the easiest to read, so I have just added the 4 countries (CN,JP,India, US).
Covid impact on India Inc profit pools - plotted the Top 1000 companies TTM reported profit pools over last 2 decades (thick blue line), from pre covid levels of 5.25 lakh cr, TTM profits collapsed to 3.75 lakh cr bfr rising a bit to 4.25 lakh crores
Amazing that there is not one data-point on claims that India is furiously consuming energy n polluting the world!Data on energy intensity suggest that despite lower GDP and energy levels on per capita or aggregate terms,India's energy intensity is lower than even US, since 90s.
A must read paper to all those that are interested in quants/factor investing, & how it is easy to be carried away by back-tests.
Proprietary research by practitioners(if they have reputation to protect) MAY have far more repeatability in performance🤔
Even as markets are still off their highs seen in Sep/Oct 2021, India's market cap share as percent of world market-cap has risen from 2.9% (Sep 21) to 3.3% now - share last seen in 2010! - pointing to extent of outperformance of Indian equities globally in recent times!
Narrative & market cycles!
The last decade has all been about Nasdaq as asset class,with massive flows & all pervasive big tech. And in this narrative of FANGMs ,thr emerged narrative every few years that Indian IT hv lost their plot!So,pulled out decadal returns!!
India really standing out in terms of FII flows (top chart-India, while bottom is EM ex China in the first chart), in fact if one looks at other countries in EM universe, 12 month FII flows as % of their market cap are close to their lows
(Data sourced from CS)
Have seen variations of this many a time on twitter -probably laced with how Einstein(wrongly attributed) as having claimed that compounding is 8th wonder of world etc...
Is everything lost for person B, even if they put in 2x the capital after 10 years for remainder 30 yrs?
Well,if data is new oil, how about the semiconductors that power the data. All natural resources rents as % of GDP hover around 2% (oil spike in past have taken them to 5-6%), OTOH semis sales as % of GDP is about 0.6-0.7%, and with greater focus on data, EV, IoT etc can move up!
Rather than looking at only isolated categories like auto/fuel, I analyse overall indirect taxes that govt (center + state) collect from our overall consumption & see trends of how tax claims on our consumption has evolved over last 3 decades. Article published in today's ET
Aggregate trading losses for Indians only in F&O segment now at 0.25-0.35% of GDP - while still small compared to Taiwanese investors (that lost 2%+ of their GDP), absolute numbers are eye-popping indeed - the “investor” class making better choices than “trading” class?!?🤔
Never thought aggregate trading losses could be so large...study of Taiwanese investors in late 90s (where annual turnover was 250 to 500%) - aggregate trading losses after brokerage and taxes were 2.2% of GDP!!
Snapshot of various market segments of Indian equity markets and expectations being built in and historical perspective of base rates in these segments.
Current snapshot of share of large, mid, small and microcap across various fundamental attributes …
How long does it take your investment to double- in Nifty, on average it has taken about 6.62 years to double. Of course,averages don't convey the whole story, sometimes it has taken 15 years to double while for lucky few, it has been even less than a year!
3 powerful charts from a session by Fitch india Ratings that were thought provoking
1. Only about 30% of companies in India make RoCE at least 2% higher than cost of debt, in FY10, this number was close to 90% of firms!
Seeing quite a few posts on record high P/E ratios etc of Indian equities. Small theoretical exercise to potentially highlight the optical nature of a ratio like trailing P/E ratio especially in context of a massive shock like Covid
@andymukherjee70
nice of u to flag warning calls for cos to adapt.
I recall an earlier article written in Oct 2016, wherein due to failure of Indian IT to adapt to "smac"- demise of Indian IT (at tht time 110bn$)was proclaimed, & how Accenture was leaving Indian IT behind
How to compete? Acquisitions to change the trajectory of the business over time. Like Accenture buying Cloud Sherpas in 2015. Higher pay and more rigorous training for freshers. If they aren’t ready for the future of work, how can you consult client organisations on it? *End*
NAV based valuations were in vogue during last cycle of infra/real estate, as companies wd announce projects and mkts would cheer them on basis NAV. I draw some parallels to the same as TAM based valuation models are the rage for valuing new age biz now👇
Great note by
@neelkanthmishra
,if we r not spending now on rating fears,gng to be tough to get out of debt/gdp that they track!
"India will likely end year@ 82% debt/GDP,would take us 9 years to get back to 70%
@11
% nominal GDP CAGR...@ 8% growth,India may never get back to 70%!"
With recent rejig announcement in prominent indices, there is a considerable opinion that valuation ratio will sky rocket especially as many loss making new age businesses make their way into some of the indices.
Neat compilation of last 30 years by BofA APAC team, as to how India was an outlier compared to other Asian ex Japan countries and what has worked in its favour - title of their report says it all - 3 decades of frustration, one outlier!
Transcript sentiment analysis trends of NSE500 companies from 2015 till date
(Data from Bloomberg)
Positive traction in "Capex Growth" - so far (confluence of many trends coming together at same time, 🤔)
Just because someone didn't invest when they were born etc, or it their previous generation didn't invest in equities , or they hv to sacrifice everything and invest today - all these are extreme manifestation of wrongly conveying benefits of asset allocation and compounding!
Spot the odd one out!
Quite remarkable that in another 25sh years, China' dependency ratio will be as 'poor' as Japan is facing today!
Infact that is true for almost all of Europe and South Korea (phew!)🤔
Reverse of this chart - number of companies in Top 500 where earnings yield >bond yield.
Lowest reading is 32 stocks in Dec 2017, current 47
(Source: Raw data from ICICI Securities)
Almost 1 in 2 companies now have a trailing earnings yield of <2% (PE >50x)! From demonetisation time, the percent of companies trading at >50PE has moved from 10% to almost 50% now.
Universe is any company that has been part of Top 500 since 2001. (Source: ABSL AMC)