When oil majors need to discover oil, they need a trusted consultant to tell them where to drill. Alphageo is that trusted consultant

Alphageo: A stockpicker's delight

Business Standard

Mudar Patherya

There are a number of similarities between Caplin and Ajanta

Caplin Point an attractive bet

There is a newly-discovered respect for all those ductile iron pipe makers that one had earlier dismissed because they were steel related, infrastructure driven, technology intensive (hence, unpredictable) and capital intensive

Sathavahana Ispat: The next multi-bagger?

Orgasm. That's the word that comes to mind when one looks at the consolidated numbers reported by Tata Metaliks for the past financial year

Six solid reasons to be bullish on Tata Metaliks

It's that time of the year when your wife says, 'Need to show you how much weight I lost at the waist', and you intone 'wow' because you have just seen another amazing quarterly in the newspaper.  These have been some of my marital distracters:Pasupati Acrylon: This acrylic fibre play was a long-standing disappointment. It appears the company has got its act in order. Proof: Its sequence of profit-making quarters, and the pleasantly surprising last quarter. It reported an Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) of Rs 22.9 crore, an amazing interest cover (because term loan is around Rs 10 crore only) for what is usually a capital-intensive business and a profit before tax (PBT) of Rs 18.9 crore. Market capitalisation marginally in excess of Rs 200 crore. In my small mind, it appears the margins will need to be sustained through prudent de-bottlenecking that prevents any interest build-up, while gradually improving the revenue run rate.Saksoft: Credible C

A few dark horses

New acquisition sets the wheel in motion for JK Tyre

The tyres industry in India will fight a losing battle with low-priced Chinese imports

JK Tyre: The transformation specialist of the industry

Because most people don't even think it has anything to do with the country's railway sector (which is why there is still some value left in it)

GPT Infra projects set to benefit from infra boom

Plywood

India was the second most populous market. The country was one of the most under-consumed for plywood

Uniply: Transformation possible

At the risk of rubbing sodium chloride into pain points, let me stick the dear old bean out: The next big opportunity could well be Crompton Greaves (CG).The company reported its biggest day fall last week; there is a shrinking audience for the CG story.To understand why optimists have finally lost their patience (and, of course, money), it might be relevant to track how they become optimistic in the first place. This is the sequence: The great Indian story, optimism ahead of earnings growth, the earnings stagger, a delay in organisational restructuring, tired bull liquidation, complete pessimism and the sky soon falling on everyone's heads (copyright: Vitalstatistix, if you know what I mean).Appraise some of the reasons why this, then, might be the time to start buying into CG.One, the company is demerging its flagship consumer business over the foreseeable future. It has been the experience that whenever a prominent value driver is organisationally isolated, it attracts new voyeurs,

The next opportunity?

It is that time of the year when an unshaved and overfed geriatric in outrageous colours creates bell-induced cacophony but more than makes up by reaching into his gift sack and widening his cheerful influence.I can't be him but what's the harm in trying?I would give a Blu-Ray copy of Invictus to the managing director at Jubilant Life Sciences. When 2015 started, some analysts were on the verge of writing this company's obit because of warning letters at two facilities, Chinese dumping and large debt. Tough decisions later, we have a surprise: A loss of Rs 11 crore in the December quarter of 2014 has transformed to a profit of Rs 116 crore in the September quarter of 2015; its market cap has strengthened from Rs 2,751 crore at the start of 2015 to Rs 6,625 crore at near-close. Wow!I would send a copy of Jan Carlzon's Moments of Truth (he was chief executive of a losing Scandinavian Airlines before he turned it around) to Ajay Singh at SpiceJet. At the start of 2015, I would have given

Santa's Christmas picks

Remarkably, APL Apollo Tubes has virtually reinvented itself through diverse initiatives

APL Apollo Tubes: Innovator in a mundane business

Cosmo is likely to generate a 10 per cent throughput increase without any capex

Cosmo Films: Moving into a new orbit

There is more money to be made in the scientific sifting of quarterly numbers than in most things people do to earn and pay their rent on earth.Over the past month, my trawling through the business papers has generated the following leads, which I am sharing with you. If you strike oil (sorry, not oil any longer) investing in these, wire me my commission (books incidentally generate the highest return on investment in case you needed a nudge); in case some bolt in the investment engine goes into orbit, remember that this column is adequately protected with a disclaimer.PTC India Financial Services: This power infrastructure financing company might just emerge the non-white horse in the stock market sweepstakes. The company lends and invests selectively in power projects; over the years, it has moderated risk by graduating to renewable energy projects that generate a higher internal rate of return due to higher project certainty, fewer environmental clearances and shorter project cycles

Three interesting stories

It is that time of the year when even though my wife may be purring 'Darling, I lovvvve you', I am so smitten by some quarterly corporate numbers

The terrific four

Even as the government is seeking a formula to tip gross domestic product (GDP) growth past eight per cent, a Bengaluru start-up claims to be working to graduate the country's economic momentum into double-digits.Juno Tele feels while most national growth strategies are top-down, a bottom-up approach could work better. Like something as elementary as empowering people to spend amounts as small as Rs 65 or lower (less than a dollar!) through their smartphones.That's right. Just make it easier for people to spend amounts as nominal as Rs 27.75 or Rs 13.20 or even Rs 5.65 from their smartphones instead of fishing for their cards (plastic!) and suddenly the huge population at the bottom of the country's economic triangle (400 million?) could become an empowered micro-spender.So, how can this become a reality? Tele appears to have a simple answer. When a telecom carrier markets a pre-paid connection (incidentally, pre-paid accounts for more than 80 per cent of all mobile telephony revenues)

Bottom-up approach could work better for economy

One of the most exciting e-commerce stories to come out of India is neither of a large one nor of a loss-making one

The most exciting e-comm play in India

My refuge in this meltdown has been Raamdeo Agrawal's 'The Art of Wealth Creation.'Raamdeo's formula is that successful stock picking - his index is 100x, no less - is captured in the acronym of SQGLP, independently standing for Small size x Quality of business and management x Growth in earnings x Longevity of quality and growth and favourable Purchase price.Raamdeo's 100x has not been wished out of thin air; the broad Indian stock market appreciated 100-fold in the past three decades (annualised return of 17 per cent). So, his contention is that when you add discipline, one can generate 25 per cent per annum and generate 100x in less time.Raamdeo's base argument is that India's stock market merely mirrors the national economy, which is poised for big things. India took 60 years to get to its first $1 trillion of the gross domestic product (GDP) and only seven years for its next trillion (politely omitting to mention that this was achieved in the face of a slack government and global

The art of wealth creation

Last Monday, the market was more about panic than prices; more about emotion than earnings. An experienced stock picker refrained from buying because "the overall environment is just too uncertain", while another said, "Jump right in!"A seasoned player, Prashant Jain, would have said, "We have seen this situation several times in the past, where the Indian markets soon start decoupling from international markets and return to their mean." But, some would have suggested: "God, this might be the start of a bear market."I would choose to go back to my biggest refuge: An adequate safety margin, based on a conservative interpretation of corporate performance, prospects of reasonable growth (that would only deepen the discount) and a relative discount vis-à-vis the prevailing sector discounting, which means that should the stock catch up with the sectoral average, there would be a far bigger value on my hands than only a linear earnings increase.These, then, have been my pickings over the p

Four bargain stocks to consider

One of my trusted stock-picking confidantes is the 'finance cost' line in quarterly results. I put this accomplice to effective use over the past month and see what I got:Vardhman Textiles: This yarn giant slashed its interest cost from Rs 40 crore in the first quarter of 2014-15 to Rs 26.30 crore in the first quarter of the current financial year, accounting for nearly 35 per cent of its profit increase quarter-on-quarter, or q-o-q, (Rs 109 crore to Rs 145 crore). This is likely to become a consistent trend, what with the company announcing its decision to repay Rs 1,250 crore in two years.JK Tyre: Interest costs were down from Rs 69.69 crore to Rs 64.65 crore q-o-q across the two financial years, even as the broad industry continued to complain about dumping from China and increased competition within India. Whoever is managing the cash needs a good bonus.CCL Products: The company paid Rs 4.23 crore as interest in the first quarter of 2014-15, moderated down to Rs 2.73 crore in the l

Finance cost - a game changer

Indo Count Textiles appreciated 5,600 per cent in the past couple of years, even as I kept saying 'The stock will technically correct,' but never did it happen

Indo Count: The next SYMPHONY

Seems someone just woke up to the fact the Saurashtra Cement wasn't a loss-making company after all

Mudar Patherya

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