Avenue Supermarts hits new high; market-cap crosses Rs 900-billion

Avenue Supermarts, which owns and operates D-Mart stores, crossed Rs 900 billion in market capitalisation (market-cap) for the first time on Tuesday after the stock price of the company hit new high on the BSE.

Avenue Supermarts with the m-cap of Rs 921.77 billion stands in at number 33rd position in overall m-cap ranking at 11:59 am, the BSE data shows. The stock was trading 3% higher at Rs 1,476 as compared to 0.28% rise the S&P BSE Sensex.

Avenue Supermarts touched intra-day high of Rs 1,479, its highest level since listing on March 21, 2017. Shares of Radhakishan Damani-led Avenue Supermarts have risen 131% since listing. It zoomed as much as 394% from the issue price of Rs 299 offered at the time of its initial share sale.

Thus far in the month of April, Avenue Supermarts was up 11% after the analysts at JM Financial Institutional Securities initiate the coverage on the stock with ‘buy’ rating and 12 month target price of Rs 1,675. The benchmark index was up 2.8% in past seven trading days.

The brokerage firm believes D-Mart is a key beneficiary of the decadal growth opportunity in Food & Grocery retailing, which has a mere 3% organised sector penetration – this provides D-Mart with an prolonged high-growth phase – we expect its revenue and profit to be respectively at least 9x and 13x their current size in ten years’ time. In this context, relative valuation multiple based on near-term earnings probably under-estimate the intrinsic value and growth potential of the business.

Meanwhile analysts at Edelweiss Securities expects D-Mart to post 20% same store sales growth (SSG) growth for the quarter ended March 2018.

“We also expect new stores added over last 24 months to continue run-rate of around Rs 400 million p.a. Led by favourable product mix, efficient inventory management through centralized sourcing as well as improving efficiencies we expect EBITDA margins to improve by around 250bps YoY. Jump in other income and reduction in interest expense should aid overall earnings growth,” the brokerage firm said in quarterly preview.