Reviewing 2014

Happy New Year

2014 has been an eventful year. At the macro level, we had a new government, an enthusiastic new leader, a great bull run… and at the personal level, we attended many more AGMs, read more books and met many great intellectual minds in the investing world. We had the highest ever visitors on both Dalal-Street and Screener, together exceeding an average traffic of 1 million page views every month, with a total reading time of over 750 hours each day.

Top performers and learnings:

Last couple of years have been great for a stock picker as the market has well rewarded the companies with niche business models, consistent growth and good corporate governance. Companies with healthy cash flows and a passionate management have been re-rated at an unprecedented pace.

Growth stocks such as Astral Poly, Avanti, Ashiana, Kitex, Shilpa, Atul Auto, Ajanta Pharma, Poly Medicure and Mayur Uniquoters performed exceptionally well. ValuePickr community proved to be an invaluable platform to collaborate with dedicated fellow investors and bring out the best of discussions. It feels great to see Shilpa Medicare and Atul Auto getting mentioned even now as the high potential ideas in the Motilal Wealth creation study.

Value stocks such as Oriental Carbon, MPS, Canfin and Lumax Autotech too performed equally well. These were trading at a sheer undervaluation despite having a good business model with a healthy growth. Reaction to the SEBI’s call auction rule also provided us an opportunity to invest in few micro caps such as Premco Global, Dynemic Product, Freshtrop and Kovai Medical. They were available at throwaway valuations, consequently providing some fantastic returns. Key is to follow value, which is always there, whenever the general mood is dull 🙂 .

Worst performers and learnings:

Mistakes

GRP – A big learning has been that one should learn to detach oneself from their favorite idea. Though the stock hasn’t fallen since quite sometime, one has had to incur a lot of opportunity cost. The company continues to struggle and given the low natural rubber prices and demand, there hasn’t been any material improvement in operations of the company.

Cairn India – We got attracted by the statistical cheapness of the stock and the huge cash pile the company had been sitting on. It seemed a very safe idea with hardly any downside. But the stock subsequently fell almost 30-35% given the big fall in prices of crude oil. While it could not have been predicted, management’s action on cash also contributed to the fall.

Interesting articles:

Professor Bakshi’s lecture on Relaxo (along with the lecture on paying up) was a superb article which helped us in adding another tool as to how one should try and evaluate a company for a long term perspective. We never used to think like this before these articles.

Ian Cassel’s posts on Conviction to Hold and Averaging Up are also very good reads.

Do go through Charlie Munger’s AGM Notes, where Munger is (as usual) at his best.

We also recommend our readers to watch these movies:

Other People’s Money
Jiro Dreams of Shushi

We wish everyone a Very Happy New Year :).

DISCLAIMER: We are not expressing any opinion on on any of the stocks mentioned in the post. We are only sharing about what we think went right or went wrong in our analyses - it does not translate into a buy or sell call. The only opionion expressed in the above post is for the movies and articles.

72 thoughts on “Reviewing 2014”

  1. Advanced Happy New Year wishes to dalal-street.in and screener.in team. Excellent capture of articles and loved watching the movie of “Other People’s Money”. Keep up great work in sharing the wisdom.

  2. Wish you a happy new year Ayush and Pratyush! Have always loved reading your blog and have immensely benefited from screener.in. Have learnt a lot from you guys and hopefully will continue to learn more.

  3. Pratyush and Ayush,

    Wish you and the Dalaal Street team a very happy and prosperous 2015. Both Screener.in and this site deserves many more accomplishments in the future. Screener is my most visited site which I use for screening my opportunities. Thanks for providing this wonderful tool to the investor community.

    Regards
    Ravi

  4. Thanks Ayush, Pratyush and Donald 🙂 I have been a mute spectator at ValuePickr. It has been an immense source of learning. Hoping to contribute actively in 2015. Wish you all a very happy new year!

  5. Dear Ayush Bhaiya & Pratyush,
    Wish you and the Dalal Street team a very happy and prosperous new year. Screener is my most visited site Thanks for providing this wonderful tool.

    Regards,
    Rahul

  6. Dear Ayush and Pratyush

    Wish you both a happy new year and many more to come. Thank you for selflessly sharing your knowledge and the wonderful screener! Best Regards
    Samir Shah

  7. Hi Ayush, wish you a very healthy and wonderful new year! Thanks for sharing the experience and ideas throughout the last year and wish the same will continue in the coming years.
    I watched both the movies you mentioned above. What are the takeaways from OPM movie? Is it that entrepreneurs keep putting money in businesses which are obsolete? or that activist investors are good for the society? Kindly give your interpretations.
    -Daya

    1. Hi Daya,

      Wish you a very Happy New Year!

      OPM gives a good perspective of both the sides. The speech at the AGM was fantastic and both the sides had motivating views. There is no wrong or right….but yes, in a capitalist world, capital should find its way to better productivity. Change is the only thing constant.

      Ayush

  8. Hi Ayush and Pratyush…..Wishing you and whole Dalal street team as very happy and prosperous new year 2015 ahead…….we are missing your new stock ideas….i am sure you will find solution to new SEBI stock recommandation guide line on blog and came out of it to share your new stock ideas in future…..bye tacke care…

  9. Hi Ayush, Prathyush, Thanks for the wonderful help that you provide to us all through the screener tool.
    I believe you had mentioned earlier that the screener would be include a feature to export the results from custom screens to excel. It would be really useful to have that. Just wanted to check if you still plan to include that. Thanks again for all the information and tools that you share!

      1. Thanks for the quick reply, Ayush. Sorry to bother again. Not able to understand from this link if you had already implemented this.

        Just to clarify, I was referring to export to excel functionality for screens and not individual companies (for which your excel export function is amazingly useful).

  10. Hi Ayush,
    I heard the earnings call of Kitex on 13th Jan’2015. I found one thing very strange which is as follws: the MD said that the money lying in EFC account has not been converted into rupees or has not been put into any other interest bearing instrument as they expect the Dollar to appreciate and wish to convert once Dollar appreciates.
    I found this to be a very strange reply because the trying to make money because of forex moments is not the business or primary activity of the company.
    Do you have any views on the same?
    Would appreciate a response on this.
    Regards.

    1. Hi,

      Yeah, we also felt the comment to be pretty strange. However, at the same time we need to appreciate that the nos look pretty clean….the co has been paying taxes, low working capital etc….and hence are not overly worried. But yes his logic didn’t seem good.

      Ayush

  11. Dear Pratyush,

    i was checking through the list of companies which were scanned by Piotroski Scan. However is there a way to find a company which had a good piotroski score (9) 3 yrs back and see how it did over the year… or is it possible to plot the piotroski score of comapny over the last few years !

    Thank you
    Nitin

  12. Hi Ayush,

    Hope your doing well.

    I have one question, When your analyze a company, how much you give weightage to profile margin. For ex., KSE ltd, its has all excellent nos except OPM (from Sceener) which is around 4-5%. I like increase in sales,profit , Roce>20, div>0 etc.

    Disclaimer:Having initial investment in KSE ltd

    1. Hi Raj,

      Though its not good to have OPM% of about 4-5% as a small variation in business variables can lead to substantial swing in profitability. But at the same time there are businesses which have done very well even on low margins as they have high turnovers. So the more important thing to look for is the uderlying business model and ROCE over a longer period.

  13. Hi Pratyush/Ayush

    Unable to access screener. Getting the following message

    (A secure connection cannot be established because this site uses an unsupported protocol.

    Error code: ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH )

    Can you look. Is it down because of heavy traffic

    Regards
    mallikarjun

  14. Hi Arun,

    Please if you could suggest whether a fresh buy can be made in the following stocks? I want to make a core portfolio buying them.

    1) Asian Granito

    2) Mold-Tek Packaging

    3) Mindteck

    4) Sunil-hi tech Engineers.

    If you could also tell me about their future CAGR and growth prospects..

  15. Hai Ayush earlier also I asked about this have you seen the dec numbers of associated alcholol and brewery ltd very interesting you suggested that we see for consistency in performance now how do you feel with dec qtr numbers

    1. Hi Kumaresh,

      I can’t share my view/opinion on a stock as per the SEBI requirement. However, will like to share that we are invested in the same and its good to see the co posting good results.

      Regards,
      Ayush

  16. I can see that you are not updating the change log from Aug 14 onwards.. any specific reason of not doing so.. your investment ideas are great .. please continue the great work

  17. Sir is
    Kilitch Drug a classic case of undervaluation as performancewise its profits
    and turnover has already doubled compared to LY within 9 months of CY, it has
    cash bal of Rs30/-share and reserves of more than 100cr. company did well
    between 2008 to 2011 and then sold its few plants to multinational and paid
    300% spl div to shareholders in 2012 now since last few quarters growth is also
    good also no debt, no pledge, promoter stake 65% with good management
    credentials so then why stock should be
    at 33 when markets in bull run? Besides the company planning some major
    expansion recently and also owns land
    and assets worth hundreds of crores, have i missed some aspect pls guide Sir.

  18. Hello Ayush & Pratyush,

    I wish you continued posting. I just wanted your opinion on Selan Exploration, which I am watching and seems like an excellent opportunity in distress type pick.

    Also,do you track Menon Bearing/Pistons?

    Thanks in Advance!

  19. Ayush, Pratyush – I have some shares of Manjushree Technopack. I was out of india and could not track the same. bought it couple of years back. I see a notice from the company with a buy back price of Rs 455. It also states that Exit period start is Mar 24 2015 and exit period end is Mar 23 2016. The stock is not trading also. can you please let me know what is your view on the buy back, shall retail investors surrender their stock? also if you can throw some light – will the trading not happen for 1year in this stock ?

    1. Hi Sidhartha,

      We haven’t been tracking Manjushree closely. The co had come with an intention to de-list its shares and had offered the above price. We are not updated about the developments after that.

      The co has investor section on their website – http://www.manjushreeindia.com/investors/overview/….you may contact the company secretary and get an update.

  20. dont know where to request for a feature. so doing it here.
    can we get a sector list.
    see all companies within a sector with data as per customized columns.
    should be a small programming change for you.!
    thanks.!

    1. Hi Rajeev,

      You can see all the companies in a particular sector by entering the industry name in the top search box and selecting the last option of all the results.

      Hope that helps,
      Pratyush

      1. Hi pratyush
        I would be great if some sector name list if provided some where where we can click on them and open.

        also is a sector wise comparison possible like we have now for companies?
        compare for various financial parameters like sales growth, profit growth, pe debt etc.. for sectors.. not just companies.?

  21. Ayush Screener is truely great initiative on your team part. I have a suggestion to improve it. Currently you display data for 10 years through screener. Is it possible for you to display data for more number of years. Already even though in ur DB you have data for year 2004 and 2003 atleast for screener can view data from 2005 only. It require some feature implementation like pagination or some other solution. Anyway thanks for wonderful data analytic solution for indian stock market.

  22. Dear Ayush and Prtyush
    Can you add below variables to screener::
    1..Gross profit margin
    2..% Rise in EPS (YoY)
    3..% Increase in Cash from Operations
    4..Receivables day,Crediters Day , Debters Day , Cash Conversion Cyle,Working Capital Day yoy ie.. for all years ie 2008 to 2014
    5..Fixed asset Ratio,Asset turnover yoy

  23. Hi Ayush & Pratyush,

    I have query regarding Book Value on Screener. for example TCS book value on Screener is 352.51 but when I calculate it comes to ~251[49194.76Cr/1958727979]
    Can you help me understand whats missing from my calculation?

    Thanks,
    Yogendra

  24. Hello mr Ayush since you have invested in associated alcholols & breweries ltd as an investor I think you can write your comments on fy 15 results I noticed yoy basis loan and advance reduced to 16 cr from 33 cr debt reduced to 38 cr with this DER 18% ROIC > 24% CMP to Bv just about 1 GF,PS and ALT Z score all at resonable level operating cash flow fy 15 from my calculation seems postive at > 16 cr trade recievable and inventory lowest in sector 5 yr CAGR growth on revenue > 34% and profit> 40%. I can one query did you notice a sudden increase in the employee cost this qtr is that a cause of concern and dividend still no news also can you throw some light on promoter pedigree. I was in INDORE and even went upto Barwaha and saw there disterlerry (with the help of my friend working in MP pollution board) it is good and renovated on the way in simhrol these guys had a beer distillery Mount Everest breweries ltd I noticed that they have shown this in there AR as an investment that disterlerry was very modern and worth must be above 50 cr will this have any impact on AABL since this is shown as there investment. Kindly please throw some light as an investor I think that is allowed as per SEBI regulation regards

    1. Hi Kumaresh,

      Yes, we agree with your thoughts and do like the way the company has grown in recent years. A few concerning things are: 1. there is hardly much information out about the company and its business so its touch to take a call 2. It was strange to see a major spike in employee cost in the latest quarter and no explanation from the management on the same. 3. They haven’t paid dividend etc. But still its interesting and one should follow and try to understand things better.

      Its good to see that you made efforts to go and visit the factory etc.

  25. dear aayush/prtyush

    Kindly give formula screener used for working capital???
    Can you add DEFENSIVE EARNINGS in screener predefined ratios???
    Thanks

  26. Hi Ayush,

    Do you still track Manali Petro? The results seem to be good over last few quarters.

    Regards,
    Roberto

    1. Hi,

      Yes, we are invested and like the consistent improvement the company has been delivering. However, it was quite concerning to see sudden expense item of rent in the March qtr results with no explanation from the company.

  27. Not sure where i can ask this question but i am unable to add some companies to my watchlist. I had problems with Talwalkars and Aarti Drugs. They just won’t show up on the watchlist even after adding them.

    And again, congratulations on creating such a wonderful site. It’s no 1 source for any Indian value investor.

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  31. hi, y you are not updating the blog, please update your ideas are great and usefull fro new people in stock market

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