“Recognising these uncertainties, we take out L&T from our India focus portfolio and replace it with HCL Tech. L&T has been in our portfolio since its inception in January 2021 and outperformed by a huge 106.2ppt. ITC remains our preferred staples name,” CLSA said.
The brokerage is now clearly overweight banks, commodities, and IT along with insurance and staples. “Our exposure to Modi stocks is limited to ONGC and Reliance as these have rerated by less than 15% in the last six months. We fear de-rating in the expensive discretionary and capex space and prefer the valuation support in private banks,” it said.
On Modi stocks, it said the rally was led by a material re-rating in earnings multiples. “This was another sign of rising conviction on predictable supply side policymaking and reforms going into the event, which appears very vulnerable now,” CLSA’s Vikash Kumar Jain said, adding that the election results openly question the notable premium of Indian equities versus history, compared to bonds, the near-record premium of small and midcaps and the recent re-rating of Modi stocks.
Top stocks in CLSA India Focus portfolio are RIL, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Infosys, L&T, Axis Bank, ONGC, SBI Life, IndusInd Bank, Hindalco and ITC.After ending Tuesday’s session with a 6% downside, Nifty was trading on a highly volatile note, with analysts saying that 19x the index is above its 18-year historical average PE. “This also makes India one of the most expensive markets in the world and its premium to Asia Ex Japan and EM peers is more than 1SD above the historical average,” Jain said.(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)