Benchmark indices are trading near their all-time highs with the Sensex rising nearly 300 points and the Nifty above 11,300 levels but broader markets are still under pressure with the Nifty Midcap and BSE Smallcap indices down 12-14 percent in 2018.
Large number of stocks in largecap and mid & small-cap spaces have done poorly, so are giving a lot of opportunity to pick good quality ones. Among them some have reported good earnings, their valuations are reasonable considering Indian politics and global risks, Ashwini Agarwal, Ashmore Investment Management India told CNBC-TV18. "I am quite excited to see that opportunity now than six months ago, so one should focus on individual stocks rather than looking at index."
He expects earnings growth of around 20 percent for FY19 and 18-19 percent for FY20.
"Big drivers to those growth expectations are stabilisation in slippages of industrial banks, likely lower provisioning in second half of FY19. Even consumption space is looking good where margins are robust. Pharma earnings weakness seems to have bottomed out and there is significant earnings growth later this year," he reasoned for overall earnings growth.
What excites him is likely broad based growth where the companies have strong balance sheet and on ground the business activity looks up.
Corporate Lenders
In case of industrial lenders, he said, "We are starting to see stabilisation in gross NPAs and at some point of time in the second half of FY19 would be comfortable for these companies. Even credit cost will fall as we move ahead in the second half."
Consumption
Lot of consumption companies impacted in June quarter FY18 due to disruption led by GST and demonetisation.
Agarwal said year-on-year makes less sense to look at consumption companies but look at sequential growth, auto, pharma and consumer companies where we are starting to see reasonable traction and in fact consumer seems to be in good shape.
In the past year, growth was led by wage revision for government employees, which is now priced in, he feels.
He said, "We are starting to see pick up in investment as recently large engineering conglomerate also said private sector capex is pick up. Even the RBI in its August policy meeting indicated capacity utilisation picking up, closing the output gap, private capex picking up."
So as are approaching general elections 2019 and in addition to GST benefits ahead, demand continued to be good, he believes.
However, something may happen at global levels, risk is always there related to trade war, crude oil etc, but I am not terribly concerned about domestic demand not improving, he said.
Money Flow
Agarwal said look at April to June data, every week there had been billion dollar FII outflow but look at weekly figure from June, there has been some tapering in selling flow.
So he believes that shows the worst is behind and numbers itself seem to be telling FII flows are stabilising.
Emerging Markets
He said balance sheet, trade deficit and fiscal deficit in emerging markets are much stronger than before.
Earlier some time fiscal deficit and current account deficit used to be 5 percent plus but look at now, these markets are much healthy place than before.So one has to focus on fundamentals of emerging markets which are strong post financial crisis, Ashmore's Agarwal advised. "Longer term horizon look strong for EMs, so emerging markets should be good place to be in."
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