Clariant Chemicals' sale of business - no clarity here!

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 4/17/2013 7:43:00 AM

'Lets play a small word association game. I will write a word and you say the first thing that comes to your mind upon reading the word..1. Stock market  (Most of you will probably say high returns, volatility, manipulation, satta, etc)2. Government  (Most of you will probably say lethargic, corrupt, unreliable, etc)3. Wife  (Dangerous territory..so no comments from my side)4. MNC Management  (I am sure most of you will say high quality, clean, professional, fair,(...)'

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SEBI's new baby - rules for illiquid stocks

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 4/15/2013 2:12:00 PM

'I am sure most of you must have heard of SEBI's new rules for trading in what it calls 'illiquid stocks' which came into effect from 8th April 2013. Some of you may not have heard of it because surprisingly, the media has just not highlighted the issue! Perhaps there is not much incentive for the media to get involved here! ;-) These rules hit more than 2100 hundred companies among the listed space, as can be seen in the annexure to this notice. SEBI has not explained exac(...)'

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Sah Petroleums Ltd and the power of "brand"!

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 3/21/2013 6:16:00 PM

'This post aims to serve two purposes; to look into Sah Petro as a company and to look at what branding can do to a product!Lets start with the latter..All of us would agree that branding works wonders for any product. Many-a-time, we buy a branded product just because its branded, with no idea about what real value addition the branding has done to the base product!To give a related example, given a choice, what would you fill in your vehicle; Castrol oil or some unbranded oil? Ok, (...)'

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Quarterly Update - Phillips Carbon and NBCC

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 2/27/2013 12:47:00 PM

'Some developments have been taking place in both these companies I track. Hence, the update..Phillips Carbon - Pain continues..I had written about Phillips Carbon some time ago. After that, the December 2012 quarterly result has come in. The company reported a totally subdued performance (to be honest, I was expecting a much worse result). I had mentioned some risks in the earlier write-up, many of which have started playing out. Following points may be noted:CBFS (raw mat(...)'

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Goldstone Infratech Ltd. - Another open open-offer!!

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 1/31/2013 8:32:00 AM

'The market is full of apparent opportunities, where the hidden risks are huge. A lot of times, the risks become clear only after we have incurred a loss in such opportunities!! (i.e. in hindsight)Goldstone is another such apparent opportunity, where the risks need to be given due consideration. It is an opportunity which has arisen simply due to legal compulsions and is not backed by proper fundamentals and valuations.BackgroundGoldstone Infratech Ltd (GIL) is a Secundarabad based c(...)'

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Deccan Chronicle results - Boy O Boy!!

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 1/22/2013 1:07:00 PM

'I got an early morning call today from a very amused Ninad asking me to go online ASAP and check out Deccan Chronicle's quarter and year-end results for September 2012. Now everybody knows that there have been a lot of problems the company is facing and the whole situation has raised a lot of unanswered questions too. But to be honest, I was totally unprepared for what I saw in the results. The P&L is screwed, but the balance sheet is royally screwed. Check o(...)'

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Marg Ltd Open Offer - a lose-lose situation

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 12/14/2012 6:48:00 PM

'Marg Ltd (BSE 530543) is a Chennai based infrastructure company. About an year ago, the company had announced a voluntary open offer to acquire 20% of the shares of the company at Rs.91 per share. However, SEBI detected violations of the takeover code in the same and investigations started. This article will make the background of the case pretty clear.Well, today SEBI has directed the promoters of Marg to revise the open offer price to Rs.340 per share! Article (...)'

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Phillips Carbon Black - Goes in the red!

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 12/10/2012 12:57:00 PM

'In this post, I am merely providing an update of some interesting things that have happened  with respect to Phillips Carbon over the past year or so, in normal, jargon-free, understandable English! This is not at all a reco to buy/sell (I am a reco-less person) and I would urge readers to digest the info and then take their own buy/sell decisions based on own analysis, logic and common sense.The basic fundasCarbon black is used mostly as a pigment, which finds vast application(...)'

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Noida Toll Bridge - A few (disturbing) developments

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 11/22/2012 8:51:00 PM

'Noida Toll Bridge has been a favourite of a lot of value oriented investors for a variety of reasons. Those who are not acquainted with the company may please go through this very very detailed report on the company. Specially, as seen in the recently quarterly results, since it has become a net-debt-free company, a lot of people are sitting up and taking notice. I will not dwell upon the troubled past of the company. The company has excellent cashflows and debt is all set(...)'

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Disa India Ltd - Update

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 11/17/2012 6:14:00 AM

'Disa India Ltd has come out with the following announcement yesterday.. DISA Holding A/S (the "Seller") has submitted to BSE a Notice of Offer for Sale an aggregate of upto 173,483 equity shares of face value of Rs. 10/- each of Disa India Ltd. (the "Company and such equity shares referred to as "Sale Shares") aggregating to 11.487% of the total paid up share capital of the Company as on'

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CMI FPE Ltd. - Interesting, but still work-in-progress..

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 11/15/2012 7:49:00 AM

'Wish all of you a very happy and peaceful Diwali.. Well, I often take up the following exercise in my class. You may find it interesting too.. Say there are 2 companies A Ltd and B Ltd. Both are textile companies of the exact same size, having same margin, same products, financials and similar quality of management. Now say that A Ltd has just bought a new machine, which increases their'

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An update on stuff...

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 10/19/2012 6:11:00 AM

'Hello to all! Well, I have finished torturing my students (my lectures are over) and now its time to concentrate more on torturing my readers! :-)I have this habit of putting up brief updates at regular intervals, so here it goes..Mr.Market has smiled upon most of us and I believe that all of our portfolios will be galloping for whatever reasons! Many of us will be secretly considering ourselves as amazing stock pickers and investors. However, very few acknowledge the role(...)'

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A good site for investors

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 9/23/2012 1:26:00 PM

'A good friend of mine, Ayush and his brother Pratyush write an excellent blog.They have also recently started a new website  http://www.screener.in/This, I feel, is an excellent website for any serious investor. Not only does it give you screeners and filters, but it also gives you last 10 years' data as well as numerous value-adding content, email updates, etc.Registration is free. Do make good use of it.Disclosures;1. I am not connected in any professional way with the ab(...)'

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A bit more on open offers..

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 9/12/2012 1:50:00 PM

'I had recently written a post on the acceptance ratio in open offers and I got a lot of interesting feedback on the same on the blog as well as on email.Someone claimed that there is nothing special or interesting in the actual acceptance ratio being so high vis-a-vis the theoretical acceptance ratio. Someone else thought that I have an itch to blog, which is why I have put up a useless post. :-)Well, everybody has an opinion, which should be respected. But someone also suggested th(...)'

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An interesting observation on open offers..

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 9/10/2012 4:35:00 PM

'This post is a result of an over-a-cup-of-tea-discussion with Mr.Niren Parekh. Niren is a very good friend and an excellent investor. Also, he is too lazy to start a blog! The post is a result of an observation made originally by him and so I cannot claim this to be my own brain-work.Open offers are excellent special situation cases. Although the absolute return in such offers is typically not very large, if done properly, they can offer excellent short-term returns with relatively (...)'

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NBCC - Fantastic business and 'sitter' valuation, but...

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 8/20/2012 7:32:00 PM

'National Buildings Construction Company (NBCC) is a BSE, NSE listed PSU. The company came out with its IPO in March 2012 at Rs.106 per share. The current financials of the company are as under:Seems great! I can almost see all the Graham fans salivating!!Well, it gets even better!Unlike a lot of companies, where cash is more than market cap, this company is not facing any problems on the business front.The business:NBCC's business is pretty straight forward. It operates in 3 segment(...)'

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APW President - A Delisting Case

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 8/14/2012 8:04:00 PM

'Until a few months ago, delisting was the flavour of the day. With recency bias of cases like Alfa Laval and Atlas Copco, an equation was formed.. MNC + above 75% holding = Profit guaranteed! In some cases, MNCs with less than 75% promoter holding ran up too! It makes no sense to participate in these opportunities when the crowd is running after them. Consensus is seldom right! I had written a post on this too..However, over a period of time, the market has slowly forgotte(...)'

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Annual Reports and revised Schedule VI

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 7/30/2012 10:14:00 AM

'The annual reports season is upon us. This is a very exciting time for anyone who is serious about investing. Annual reports give a lot of information and are extremely useful for analysis.However, from FY12 onwards, the New Schedule VI has come into effect. The presentation of financial statements (as well as schedules and notes to accounts) is governed by Schedule VI. As a result, the way in which the financial statements are presented this year onwards will be completely differen(...)'

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In a lighter vein..

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 6/27/2012 1:08:00 PM

'The following post has a lot of entertainment value and should not be taken too seriously!!BSE, NSE announcements are a great source of getting information and generating ideas. However, sometimes, companies come out with hilarious announcements. Check out this one from Madras  Fertilisers, which a reader shared with me..Click to enlargeWho says auditors do not have a sense of humour!! :-)Recently, I came across another, rather value-adding announcement, which is as follows:Cli(...)'

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Sundaram Clayton Demerger - Some Clarifications

Author : Neeraj Marathe      Blog : THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS      Date : 6/19/2012 6:51:00 PM

'I had written about the amalgamation-demerger scheme between Sundaram Clayton (SCL), Anusha Investments (AIL), TVS Investments (TVSIL) and Sundaram Investments (SIL) a few days ago. I had highlighted a questionable corporate governance action in that post.I got a number of emails, asking queries about the demerger. Seems like there is a bit of confusion about how the scheme has been interpreted/understood by people. So, here are some clarifications about the same.What is t(...)'

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