First, we need to talk about what’s brewing at the so-called internet stocks in India.
The picture isn’t pretty
Info Edge India, IndiaMART Intermesh and even
(the so-called FAANG of India) fell 1-4 per cent today in a hat tip to their distant cousins in the United States where technology stocks were crimped by fears of interest rates and rising bond yields.
The three stocks, easily among the biggest money makers in 2020, have handsomely underperformed the 9 per cent gains in the Nifty500 index since the start of 2021 in an uncanny similarity to the technology stocks in the US.
And, investors aren’t talking about it nearly as much as they should. Clearly, the fear of their valuations becoming untenable in the face of a rising threat of higher bond yields is weighing on the tech-savvy investors and that makes you wonder if their best days are behind them.
Now that we have let that out of our system, let’s dig into Godrej Consumer.
Sprinkle of stardust
The consumer products company has taken a leaf out of its peers like Britannia Industries, Nestle India and others to knock on the door of and ask them for the best candidate who won’t be their CEO.
Godrej Consumer’s hiring of former HUL star Sudhir Sitapati as their CEO is a sixer and investors weren’t shy to show their approval as the stock zoomed 21.5 per cent in today’s session. A sprinkle of stardust to absorb the chronic underperformance of the FMCG company, it is then.
Vi’s tentative turnaround
Since we are on the topic of underperformance, it will be criminal to not mention a delightful story of recovery from a near-death experience. Vodafone Idea was actually able to convince Indian mobile phone users to use their network after 15 months of being junked and nearly going out business.
Who knew not paying your new CEO could work as an incentive for the man to stage what appears to be the first signs of turnaround, or at least that’s what the market thinks as the stock soared nearly 9 per cent.
No, we are not biased towards the ‘popular’ stocks in the market and here’s our proof.
An obscure stock goes bonkers
Ajanta Soya, a relatively obscure company involved in the business of edibles oils, soared 9 per cent as investors piled into the company’s stock, seeing it as a beneficiary of the crazy rally that the global edible oils market is seeing. This is no fluke, sire. The debt free company’s stock has more than doubled in the space of nine months and word has it, the rise has just started.
On that note of optimism, we shall halt the train here for you to de-board. Go on then.
