The Tatas have been a wealth creator group. From Titan to Trend, from Indian Hotel to Tata Consumer, some of these stocks have just hit out of the park. How would you approach the Tata group of stocks? With the exception of one or two, all Tata group companies are trading at PE multiples which are highest in their respective sectors.
That is okay, I think that is a value unlocking which was long overdue. They always deserved a far greater multiple given the fact that they come from the Tata brand. I do not think you really can say that because they are at such high multiples over many years, they should be sold into. And I think we prepare a lot of custom indices. When we prepared the Tata custom index, we realised that it actually broke out of a six-month consolidation a month back.
You must have seen the kind of move Tata Power, Tata Consumer have seen in the recent past. Tata Steel also seems to be breaking out. I think this is a group which is pretty much a no-brainer. If you have to play the India story, if you want to participate in the markets aggressively, you just have to stay invested. There will be phases where it might not do as well, so be it. I mean, you cannot play this market 2020 on a daily basis but as a long-term investor, Tata Group is clearly the best proxy to play the India story.
The most obvious names that one has pegging out within largecaps are HDFC Bank, Reliance, ICICI Bank, ITC, I will skip Infosys wherein they have the maximum weightage and the bearing on the index and they are quite a distance from their all-time peaks, both in terms of valuations as well as price action. Are these the names you are tilting towards within largecaps?
Not really. It is over-owned, over-researched, and just because it has not done well in the last three-three and a half months, a lot of people are hoping that they do well because then the underperformance comes to an end. But I do believe that instead of an HDFC Bank, I would rather go the SBI way.
SBI can beat some of the other private bank returns over the next three to six months. That is the bet that we are taking at Goldilocks and we put out a recommendation a couple of days back.
But the other top names; Reliance, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, ITC, L&T, as you mentioned, and they will be market performers. There will be times when they will do well. Also, let us not forget, we live in a synchronised world. This entire rally has been short-covering driven, and once that short-covering gets over, which I think is getting over at today’s prices, I think things will go back to normal, and all of these stocks will go back into a range. So they might have done well, but do not expect them to do something special over the next three to six months.