Kewal Kiran Clothing Ltd.: Investment Thesis

Summary - Kewal Kiran Clothing Ltd. (KKCL) is a manufacturer of branded apparel, operating the 'Killer', 'Lawman Pg3', 'Integriti' and 'easies' brands, predominantly selling menswear and denims (57%). Having top quartile fundamentals on account of multi channel asset light distribution, conservative management, and strong brand recall for denims, studying KKCL has been an interesting case …

Ultramarine & Pigments Ltd.: Investment Thesis

Ultramarine Pigments Ltd. is a chemicals small cap based out of Tamil Nadu and manufactures surfactants (53%) and pigments (37%). The company claims to be world’s 3rd largest manufacturer of ultramarine (blue shaded) pigment. In surfactants, its end user segments are Personal care, construction and fire safety. It also launched its own range of detergents …

MCX Ltd.: Investment Thesis

MCX (Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd.) is India’s largest commodity derivatives exchange primarily dealing in non agri commodities – Gold, Silver, Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Copper, Zinc, Nickel etc. It is perhaps a textbook Network Effects business – more participants bring in more liquidity, which further brings in even more participants, thereby perpetuating the …

RITES Ltd.: Investment Thesis

RITES (Rail India Technical and Economic Services) Ltd. is a railway PSU operating since the last 44 years. It started out with 2 businesses – Consultancy Services and an agency for Export of Locomotives to all countries except Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand (another PSU IRCON exports there). Consultancy Services include conducting feasibility studies, preparing Detailed …

Bajaj Finance Ltd.: Investment Thesis – Part 2

While in the previous post, i spoke about the fundamentals and business aspects of Bajaj Finance Ltd. (BFL), in this post, we'll go through company's behaviour during downturns, ending with thoughts on its valuation. Risks Apart from Gross NPAs, which market participants have a key eye on, its very difficult to understand the troubles brewing …

Bajaj Finance Ltd.: Investment Thesis – Part 1

As I start looking at lending businesses in detail, I inadvertently picked up the poster boy of Indian NBFCs – Bajaj Finance Ltd (BFL). I wanted to find out what made Bajaj Finance Ltd. one of the biggest wealth creators in the Indian stock markets in the last 10 years, despite it coming from a …

Business Pitfalls: Garware Polyester Ltd.

Despite improvements in profitability and scale, the corporate governance issues plaguing Garware Polyester are quite appalling. So gave this idea a miss.

On farmer protests and farm laws

What could a person with a cushy soft work of making hypothesis on listed companies have to say on farmer protests? I had worked on setting up a private e-mandi in Kota, Rajasthan from Oct 2018 to May 2019 and what follows here are the things I understood from this on ground experience – Kota …

Investing Learnings from 2020

Although this was a calendar year end, with the kind of volatility markets have exhibited since Jan, the last 12 months make for a good time to take stock and introspect. As an investor in the Indian public markets, I saw a market crash for the first time in my career in March 2020. I …

Voltamp Transformers Ltd: Investment Thesis

Continuing from the previous post, I found Voltamp Transformers Ltd. to be an outlier and decided to study it further. Based in Baroda, the co. is focused on small transformers (upto 22kv) and mainly caters to the industrial segment (90%+ sales). In this post, we take a deep dive into the company.