Skip to main content

CNBC-TV18s Executive Editor, Udayan Mukherjee's view on NTPC

There was aggressive shorting in the power sector yesterday aside of some delivery base selling, which might have happened if you just look at the pile up in open interest. I think people have gone terribly short on some of these sectors.
My sense is from a trading perspective. Reliance Power might have spoiled the mood because it is unexpected for a lot of the traders at least that Reliance Power has fallen off to Rs 228 kind of levels after going ex-bonus. That has injected a lot of fear into valuations for power stocks.
Other than that there is no ostensible reason why power sold off yesterday but clearly there was a heavy amount of shorting. I think Reliance Power probably has quite a bit to do with the sentiment for how power stocks sold off.
Now you go back and look at valuations, this is a sector which has got punished quite a bit in this fall from January to March and was one of the first sectors to top out after ridiculous valuations at the end of 2007. Right now if you just look at valuations out there after the fall yesterday, they are not terribly cheap but they are not ridiculously frothy either.
So we maintained long that from the end of 2007 that when a sector falls off after euphoric valuations like power has, it will take a lot of time for the constructive period to play out and for those stocks to bounce back. But NTPC is now trading at about 2.3 times current year’s book, Power Grid is trading at 2.5-2.4 times. So at 2 times book if these stocks come down to those kind of levels, which is not inconceivable. I think for these kind of good quality companies you may consider paying twice book to maybe accumulate some of these stocks.
I am not saying go out and buy them today. But if these stocks fall a bit more from here for example NTPC falls to Rs 140-150 kind of zone, Power Grid falls to Rs 80-85 then you probably are buying reasonable amount of safety with not too much by way of downside for some of the quality companies, which have established projects on the ground.
So generally what I am saying is that the mood is bad, the stocks could still fall more but at lower levels probably your risk reward becomes a little bit better if you are a slightly medium-term investor in some of the good quality power plays.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stock Market says Merry Christmas to Investors

Sensex today closed 691.55 point up at 19854.12 , Nifty was up 218 points at 5985.10. It is the 6th bigeest gain in oneday. Today's main contributors are IT stocks. Wipro was up at 535.30 (+8.86%), Infosys up at 1810.90(+6.63%) and Satyam closed at 454.55 up by 6.28%. The buying activity was wide-base and lifted almost all the sectoral indices. Sector wise performance was as follows - BSE IT 4581.61 (+260.98) BSE Healthcare 4294.83(+52.30) BSE FMCG2218.74(+20.29) BANKEX 11101.74 (+363.15) BSE Auto5586.83(+45.57) BSE TECk3961.96 (+185.00) BSE PSU 9830.01 (+317.11) Today BSE Midcap closed at 9211.71 up by 186.17 and BSE Smallcap index closed at 11980.57 up by 167.25 points.

News - Economy

Interest rates unlikely to go down (The Economic Times 4th Jan 2008)Interest rates are unlikely to fall in near future as it was expected with the State Bank of India raising the fixed deposit rate of various maturities up to 1.5 percentage points. Other banks are also planning to raise deposit rates. After SBI increasing deposit rates, other banks have no choice but to raise the rates to mobilize resources in the domestic market, chairman of a public sector bank said. As the cost of funds for banks will increase, they will resort to raising the lending rates. A senior banker said banks would announce the increased rates in near future. More Gold zooms past Rs 11,000 per 10 gm (The Hindu Businessline 4th Jan 2008)Gold prices made history as they soared to a record $ 865.35 an ounce in the London A.M fixing on Thursday, tracking which the domestic gold surged to Rs. 11,000 per 10 gm. On Wednesday, gold was fixed at $ 840.75/oz in London while in the Indian market it quoted at Rs 10,70

IIP records negative growth of 0.4% in Oct

T he country's industrial output shrunk for the first time in many years to a record a negative growth of 0.4 per cent in October, stifled by manufacturing sector -- for rescuing which the government announced a stimulus package earlier this mo nth. Output had grown by 5.45 per cent in September, and 12.2 per cent in October, 2007. The Index for Industrial Production numbers for the seven-month period ended October was 4.1 per cent against 9.9 per cent a year ago. Manufacturing sector, which accounts for 80 per cent of the index, declined to 1.2 per cent from 13.8 per cent in the year-ago period. Only earlier this month, the government sought to rescue manufacturers by announcing an across-the-board (barring petroleum goods) four per cent cut in excise duty. Electricity sector grew by 4.4 per cent during the month, bettering 4.2 per cent output of the year-ago period, while mining sector grew by a slower 2.8 per cent against 5.1 per cent in the previous year's comparable period