Jon Levy

Shares of Sharda Cropchem are hovering near their record highs, following the agrochemical company’s strong set of quarterly results, thanks to a good mix of products and price realization that offset the volume decline in the March quarter.

Analysts say there are problems with the availability of raw materials from China, but the agency is navigating the crisis more effectively than the smaller regional players in Europe and Latin America, driving market share gains and maintaining margins.

Analysts said quarterly margins declined mainly due to higher freight costs as they offered a favorable outlook on stocks with price targets in the range of Rs 750-916, suggesting a 6-29 per cent potential upside over the counter.

Sharda Cropchem deals in two categories – agrochemical and non-agrochemical. It received 87 percent of its Q4 revenue from the Department of Agricultural Chemicals, which mainly includes herbicides and fungicides, followed by pesticides.

The agrochemical segment reported a 24 percent increase in revenue for the March quarter, sales of herbicides rose 39 percent, fungicides rose 21 percent but pesticides fell 20 percent.

About half of Europe is responsible for agrochemical income, followed by the NAFTA region (another 40 percent).

Overall, the company reported a 32 per cent annual growth in profits of Rs 177 crore in the March quarter from Rs 134 crore in the same quarter last year. Revenue increased by the same percentage to Rs 1,434 crore to Rs 1,088 crore YoY. Ebitda margin fell to 22.1 percent from 22.6 percent.

Veteran investor Dolly Khanna held 1.4 percent stake in the company as of March 31. In Wednesday’s trade, the scrip was trading flat at Rs 714 per piece and has increased by 608 per cent since April 3, 2020, to Rs 104 per piece.

“We are positive about the favorable agro-commodity cycle (yield is a growing part of the strong agri-cycle). We think

FY23 will report a 15-20 percent volume increase. With a cap of Rs 413 crore (mainly registration) on FY23, we expect free cash flow to remain healthy with debt-free balance sheets and expansion to RoCE, “the stock said while advising on a target of Rs 916 crore.

The stock traded at 14 times FY23 and 12 times FY24 earnings, said Anand Rathi, who valued the stock at 16 times FY24 earnings and proposed a revised target of Rs 835 on the stock.

“We expect high growth momentum, a strong balance sheet, free cash-flow and strong return ratio on FY22-24,” it says.

Prices of Sharda Cropchem products rose by 42 per cent year-on-year in all regions, helping Sharda to record a 32 per cent annual increase in revenue growth despite a 11 per cent decline.

“Volumes declined mainly due to shipping and logistics problems, except for the high base. More stocks than peers helped Sharda gain market share in FY22. Profits increased by 32 per cent on better margins and lower tax costs,” said Anand Rathi.

Citing positive growth momentum across the region, management expects revenue growth of 15-20% YoY for FY23, maintaining margins at current levels in the hope of better geographic mix and higher contributions from recent new registrations.

“By factoring in good FY22 performance and positive demand momentum, we have increased our EPS estimates for FY23 by 8% and FY24 by 3%. Maintain ‘BUY’ with revised target of Rs. 630 to Rs. Allocating the average multiple. We believe that the risk reward will be favorable for the stock, “Prabhudas Lilladhar said in a note.

After facing Headwind in the Covid-19 epidemic, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank is paving the way for more balanced growth by increasing its secured loan book to 50 per cent of total assets over the next two to three years.

As part of its asset diversification strategy, lenders have already restarted automatic lending and plan to enter the gold lending space soon.

The Bangalore-based lender, which started its operations as a micro-financier in 2005, transformed itself into a small finance bank in 2017. It went black with a net income of Rs 127 crore in the March 2022 quarter, but closed with FY22. Net loss of Rs 415 crore has been incurred due to the impact of the epidemic.

As of March 2022, lenders have 68 percent of their assets in the unsecured micro loan segment and the remaining 32 percent (more than 27 percent in FY21) secured accounts with housing and small business loans.

“Microlending will continue to be our biggest asset base in the foreseeable future, but in the next two to three years, we want to increase our protected book portion from 32 percent to 50 percent,” Ittira Davis, managing director and chief executive of Ujjivan, told PTI. In the last two years, we have not been able to get back into bad debt.

” As part of this asset-based diversification, we have re-launched our auto loan portfolio (two-wheeler financing), which we discontinued during the epidemic, and we expect this fiscal year to end with a book of 120 120-150 crore. , Davis said.

The second step is to enter the gold loan business which is a completely secure and high margin segment for all lenders. We hope to launch it by October / just before Diwali, “he added.

About 60 per cent of auto loan customers are existing micro lenders and the rest are new customers, he said.

Davis expects its asset base to touch Rs 20,000 crore this fiscal, up from Rs 18,162 crore in FY22.

The company reported a 20 percent increase in assets on FY22 over the previous fiscal year.

Davis said he expects record debt sales in the fourth quarter to continue into FY23. In the March 2022 quarter, it disbursed a maximum of Rs 4,870 crore in loans, Davis said.

Ujjivan’s deposits rose 39 per cent to Rs 18,292 crore, leading to a 27 per cent increase in current account savings, Davis said.

Banks have seen a change in asset quality, with gross NPAs (non-performing assets) falling to 11.8 per cent in Q2 and 9.8 per cent in Q3 to 7.1 per cent in Q4, as collection efficiency touched 100 per cent in March, and net NPAs rose to 1.7 per cent. Fell to 0.6 percent.

With a floating provision of Rs 260 crore, the bank’s provision coverage ratio is 92 per cent, he said, adding that it had canceled bad loans of Rs 200 crore in the fourth quarter of FY22. Its total provision stands at Rs 1,330 crore or 7.3 per cent cover of debt books.

The company went public in December 2019 and the public float will now have to be increased from 18 per cent to 25 per cent by this December. This is being done through a Rs 600 crore QIP issue, after which it will be a reverse consolidation

Davis expects equity sales to occur in the second quarter of FY23.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will actually address a meeting of BJP national office-bearers in Jaipur on May 20, party in-charge for Rajasthan Arun Singh said here.

The team will hold a three-day conference here from May 19 to 21 at a hotel on Delhi Road, Singh said.

On Thursday evening, BJP president JP Nadda will preside over a meeting of the party’s national general secretaries, he added.

Singh, a general secretary of the BJP, said the main meeting of national office bearers would be held on May 20 and Prime Minister Modi would address the function at 10 am.

He said four sessions would be held on May 20 and a meeting of general secretaries (organizations) would be held the next day.

“The political situation in the country will be discussed at the meeting,” Singh told reporters, adding that 136 office-bearers, including national level general secretaries, treasurers, vice-presidents and state presidents, would attend the meeting.

Nadda will arrive in Jaipur around 4 pm on Thursday. The BJP Rajasthan unit held a core committee meeting on Wednesday evening to discuss preparations for the conclave.

Apart from Singh, party state president Satish Punia, state general secretary (organization) Chandrasekhar, opposition leader Gulab Chand Kataria, Union ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Kailash Chowdhury, senior leader Omprakash Mathur, national secretary Alka Gurjar and opposition deputy leader Rajendra Rathore. , State vice-president and MP CP Joshi and other leaders were present at the meeting.

NEW DELHI: Shares rose nearly 8 per cent in Wednesday’s trade as the company’s board renamed the company ‘Patanjali Foods’ and struck a business transfer deal with Patanjali Ayurveda to acquire food retail business worth Rs 690 crore.

Scripps, which was trading higher, however, rose 7.84 per cent to Rs 1,168 on the BSE so far.

As on March 31, Patanjai Ayurveda has a 39.37 per cent stake in Ruchi Swat. Acharya

Patanjali Ayurveda, a promoter and chairman of Ruchi Soar, holds 98.5 per cent of the paid-up equity share capital.



Patanjali Ayurveda’s food retail business included manufacturing of some food products, packaging labeling and retail business, as well as manufacturing factories located in Maharashtra, Haridwar and Newasa. The deal has been made as a matter of concern on the basis of recessionary sales, Ruchi Sowa said in a filing on the BSE.

The annual turnover of the business stood at Rs 10,605 crore, the company said.

Patanjali Ayurveda has a large portfolio of food business, which has grown by more than 15 percent in the last few years.

Management has told ET NOW that it is consistently striving to reach double-digit Ebitda growth on a consolidated basis.

The FMCG component of the business will now double with the inclusion of Patanjali Food Portfolio, ET told Now Management.

Salt-to-hotel company ITC Limited reported that the combined revenue from its FY2021-22 operations, supported by higher performance of its cigarette and agribusiness segments, increased by 22 percent. Its operating income for the year stood at Rs 65,205 crore – up from Rs 53,155 crore in the previous year.

Cigarettes continue to be the largest business segment for Kolkata-based companies, delivering an impressive 16 per cent increase in sales. Revenue from the segment increased from Rs 22,557 crore in FY 2020-21 to Rs 26,158 crore. The recovery in cigarette sales per year proves that the business had declined the previous year.

“After a challenging fiscal year 2020-21, and despite repeated setbacks this year, the business has slowly recovered from improved mobility and easing restrictions, surpassing pre-epidemic levels in the latter half of the year. The business has effectively learned from institutional strengths, digital technology and the previous wave to respond swiftly across all nodes of operations, ”the company management said in a statement.

In addition to premiumizing the portfolio, ITC has launched several new products to fill the gaps with changing customer preferences. A number of different variants were introduced to cater to the needs of the ever-evolving consumer and to ensure the future readiness of the portfolio. These include ‘Classic Connect’, ‘Gold Flake Neo Smart Filter’, ‘Wills Protech’, ‘Capstan Excel’, ‘American Club Smash’, ‘Gold Flake Kings Mixpod’, ‘Gold Flake Indy Mint’, ‘ Launches. Wave Boss’ and ‘Flake Nova’. The business has expanded its presence in Focus Market by launching separate offers across different segments, ”it said. In addition, it uses Industry 4.0 and new technologies under Data Science to create a smart manufacturing environment for connected systems.

The agribusiness, which is now the second largest segment for ITC, excluding non-cigarette FMCG from the spot, has grown by 28% year on year. Driven by strong growth in wheat, rice, spices and leaf tobacco exports – revenue from the business segment stood at Rs 16,466 crore – up from Rs 12,883 crore.

In FY2022, ITC consolidated its pre-famous position as the largest Indian exporter of unadulterated tobacco, improving its market share by around 300 bps.

However, due to the scarcity of containers, it has faced a difficult challenge in exporting other products. “The operating environment was challenging due to disruptions in operations caused by the second and third waves of the epidemic. The severe shortage of containers, traffic congestion at the port and the sharp rise in freight rates have exacerbated the situation, “the agency said.

Virtual private network service providers who are not ready to comply with the new guidelines have the only option to leave India, State Minister for Electronics and IT Rajiv Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday.

The Minister, while releasing the Frequently Asked Questions (Frequently Asked Questions) about the recent guidelines on reporting incidents of cyber violations, said that every good financial institution or organization understands that a secure and reliable internet is going to help it.

“No one has the opportunity to say that we do not follow the rules and regulations of India. If you do not have logs, start maintaining logs If you are a VPN that wants to hide and anonymize the people who use its VPN and if you do not want to follow these rules, if you want to get out, to be honest you have no choice but to withdraw. . He said.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT has required cloud service providers, VPNs (virtual private network) companies, data center companies and virtual private server providers to store user data for at least five years.

Some VPN companies have claimed that the new rule could lead to cyber security flaws in the system – an argument that was rejected by the minister.

Chandrasekhar said the government was not going to make any changes to the rules forcing companies to report cyber violations on their systems within six hours of learning about it.

“Crime and cyber incidents, nature, type, shape, form are very complex. They have a very evil element behind it. There are many state actors who are using vulnerabilities. Those who violate this can proceed very quickly. Immediate reporting is fundamental to investigations, forensic analysis, situational awareness of the nature of events, “he said.

The US-based technology industry body ITI, which has members from global technology companies such as Google, Facebook, IBM and Cisco, has sought an amendment to the Indian government’s directive on reporting cyber security breaches.

ITI said the provisions under the new order could adversely affect companies and harm cyber security in the country.

The industry body has asked for greater stakeholder consultation with the industry before finalizing the guidelines.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issued a directive on April 28, requiring all government and non-government organizations, including Internet service providers, social media platforms and data centers, to report cyber security breaches within six hours. Them

The new circular issued by CERT-In obliges all service providers, intermediaries, data centers, corporates and government agencies to activate logs of all their ICT (information and communication technology) systems and maintain them safely for 180 days rolling period, and the same Indian Will be maintained within the jurisdiction.

The ITI has expressed concern over the need to enable logs of all ICT systems and maintain them under Indian jurisdiction for 180 days, the additional definition of reportable incidents and the need to connect to the companies’ servers, mandatory reporting of incidents of breach within six hours. Government of India

The Group of Ministers (GoM) has agreed to recommend a 28 per cent increase in GST rates on casinos, race courses and online gaming services.

At a meeting on May 2, the GOM discussed various aspects, including possible GST rates and technicalities, for the operation.

After the meeting, GOM convener and Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma said members were able to move forward on issues related to rates, assessments on the basis of which rates should be applied, and discussed some issues related to online gaming. Details.

Sangma, who led GOM last year to study GST rates on covid-related materials, said the meeting also discussed whether there is a general or different GST rate on online gaming.

“The government, a number of industries, stakeholders and associations need to be involved in the management of casinos, race courses and online gaming. With all these factors in mind and considering the views of all stakeholders, we will decide on rates and other related issues,” he told the media.

However, the recommendation is subject to the final approval of the GST Council, who will discuss it and make a final decision.

Currently, the GST rate is 28% for online games involving betting, and 18% for non-betting games. An 18% tax rate is also levied on commissions collected by online gaming platforms for each game.

In the case of horse racing, GST is levied at 28% of the total bet value.

As government agencies, businesses and healthcare providers address the urgent need for better access to healthcare in rural India, a new pilot program launched by the World Economic Forum (WEF) has shown that drones can be used to bring quality healthcare to people living in remote areas. Area of ​​India.

The results of the trial, “Medicine from the Sky, India: How Drones Can Make Primary Health Care Accessible to All” report, provide a realistic approach to providing essential medicines to citizens who lack access to basic healthcare, the WEF said in a statement. Statement

At the event, held in the southern state of Telangana’s Vikarabad district, eight healthcare centers with a population of over 300,000 people took part in a 45-day trial where health workers provided vaccines, samples and medical products using more than 300 COVID-19 test drones.

Interestingly, Vikarabad district was chosen because some of its communities live in the dense forests of the Anantagiri hills. The trial involved 45 days.

The WEF called it the first successful trial of long-range vaccine delivery in Asia, adding that “it shows how drone technology can be extended across India to meet emergency healthcare needs in remote areas.”

Meanwhile, Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said, “With the recent liberalization of drone rules and numerous government incentives for the drone sector, India has set the stage for the development of this innovative technology. To that end, the Medicine from Sky initiative has shown that no one lags behind in access to primary health care to ensure that the country can successfully use state-of-the-art drone technology. We are hopeful that the next steps in this initiative will bring drones into the healthcare system. “

The trial was conducted as part of a larger program, Medicine from the Sky, led by WEF’s ‘Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution India’ event, in partnership with the Telangana government, the NITI Commission and Apollo Hospital’s Healthnet Global.

Sangeeta Reddy, Joint Managing Director, said the organization’s goal was to “enable access to world-class quality healthcare services using state-of-the-art technology.”

“We look forward to continuing this project with the World Economic Forum, the Telangana government and other states across the country, which I am sure will usher in a new era in improving the healthcare delivery chain,” he said.

The program aims to work with policy makers, businesses and communities to use drone technology to expand urban-grade healthcare in remote areas of India. Several stakeholders have been consulted, including health workers, the local community, local police, district-level administrators and local air traffic control, the WEF said in a report.

Conservative investors are increasingly looking to open-ended target maturity funds for predictable returns with liquidity. According to industry experts, this is due to low profits from various fixed income products.

In comparison, the default risk of the target maturity fund is lower than that of other debt funds because they invest in public sector company bonds, state development debt and government securities. In addition, over time, the duration of these funds decreases as they become less volatile due to changes in interest rates.

Goal Maturity Fund helps investors plan their investments for 5 years.

Impact of interest rate changes

When investing in bonds, changes in interest rates play an important role in what an investor can earn in that bond.

Niranjan Awasthi, Head – Products & Marketing, Edelweiss Asset Management, explains: “Rising interest rates have led to lower bond prices and, therefore, investors in debt mutual funds are often concerned when interest rates start to rise. As we are witnessing now. The Target Maturity Passive Debt Fund assists investors in managing this risk. “

Industry experts say that when investing in debt mutual funds, investors usually look to predict returns and this is the goal of maturity passive debt funds.

“Since it has a fixed maturity date and invests only in bonds that are consistent with the maturity of the fund, there is no interest rate risk for an investor who invests in this fund and invests till its maturity,” the statement said.

It’s like investing in a bond and holding it up to maturity regardless of whether the interest rate goes up or down. Since you do not sell this bond, the returns on this bond are not affected by interest rate changes that may occur occasionally.

Experts say that Target Maturity Passive Debt Fund thus offers investors a stable and predictable return. “Usually returns can be closer to YTM where someone has invested in this fund,” Awasthi said.

Although short-term interest rate fluctuations may affect NAV, such as in a bond, “the impact is negative if one invests until maturity,” the statement concluded.

Even with the recent sharp rise in inflation due to supply-side factors, mostly war-related that are beyond the control of the central bank, the Reserve Bank’s MPC has decided to raise policy rates by 40 bps to 4.4 percent in early May. Rate action was crucial to managing inflation expectations as inflation is becoming more generalized, the latest MPC minutes indicate.

The MPC has unanimously opted for price stability over growth as it sees India’s macroeconomic fundamentals intact, excluding food and energy inflation. The MPC’s April statement raised the risk of inflation and eased concerns about growth.

Improving communication-intensive services in the revival of urban demand is driving personal costs. The outlook for agriculture remains positive in view of the normal southwest monsoon winds forecast for 2022, which will support rural use.

“The return to domestic economic activity is slowly normalizing,” Governor Shaktikant Das said in his minutes released on Wednesday. “The rising outlook for inflation calls for timely action to mitigate the effects of the second round, which could anchor inflation expectations. Higher uncertainty and volatile financial markets may add to such volatility of expectations.”

A high inflation print also adds to the risk of a negative real rate. Ashima Goel, a professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, said, “In view of the logical recovery and the sharp rise in inflation, the rate hike is needed to prevent the actual rate from becoming too negative.” “Negative real interest rate risks include buying household gold increases the current account deficit and hurts financial intermediaries.”

Justifying the timing of the RBI’s rate action, the governor said that the war in Europe is now expected to be much longer than previously expected. April inflation was expected to rise further to an eight-year high of 7.79 percent, higher than the target band of 2-6 percent. “So it needs to work through an off-cycle policy meeting. Waiting for a month until June means MPC As the war-related inflationary pressures mount, more time will be lost.

External member Jayant Verma, a professor at IIM, Ahmedabad, hinted at a sharp rise in rates soon, saying that much needed to be done as MPC prioritizes economic recovery at the height of the epidemic in early 2021 and delays in normalization. “It seems to me that an increase of 100 basis points needs to be done very soon,” Verma said.

Configuration that exists today – US yield tightening; The US dollar is getting stronger; Stop selling equities; Emerging currency devaluation and capital outflows; Rising Debt Crisis – Reminiscent of 1993-1994 followed by a cascade of emerging market crises. “At least, there are signs of a generalized financial loss,” said Deputy Governor MD Patra.