Key takeaways
Now that Covid-19 is under control, India's growth recovery is back on track. The roads are busy, markets are again bustling, and people are out and about everywhere. Masks and safe distancing are a thing of the past.
Purpose of the trip
As investors, being on the ground on a regular basis is crucial to get a holistic view of the market, which cannot be achieved with only a virtual presence. This trip was an opportunity to meet companies face-to-face, after three years of mostly Zoom calls, and conduct our due diligence to make more informed decisions around our holdings and exposure to India. It reaffirmed the view that many of our portfolio companies remain in excellent shape, run by competent management teams.
Highlights from our visit
We met 14 of our holdings on this trip. It was reassuring to hear that companies like the Power Grid Corporation of India and KEI Industries are seeing good capital expenditure growth.
Furthermore, we saw several non-holding quality companies for potential idea generation. They were good cross-checks for our holdings. Lastly, we visited the Delhi Aerocity where Prestige Estates is building a hotel and convention centre – an encouraging sign of real estate and infrastructure activity in India.
Overall, we observed that India's strong bottom-up story is intact: companies that are well-run will go from strength to strength by gaining share in a growing market.
Highlight: Prestige Estates
City of the future: Delhi Aerocity is part of a new 21st century urban-development paradigm where companies are building bustling centres of commerce around airports. Bottom picture shows the artist’s impression of the Prestige site under construction.
Prestige Estates
Prestige Estates has a healthy pipeline of ongoing and upcoming projects, including a good mix of residential and commercial properties. After achieving considerable success in South India, the company is venturing out into other states such as Mumbai. Talking with Prestige, we were pleased to hear that higher interest rates have not stopped people from buying homes. Construction at Prestige’s massive site in Delhi Aerocity is progressing well.
KEI Industries: a promising infrastructure play
In Delhi, we met KEI Industries, which makes cables and stainless-steel wires for various industries including housing construction, manufacturing, and power transmission and distribution. Among all of the companies we saw on this trip, we enjoyed this meeting the most.
The promoter took us through the ups and downs of the company’s history, which explains why the management today is exceptionally prudent at managing the balance sheet. Not only is KEI debt-free, but it also has enough cashflow to finance an expansion of its production capacity to continue growing. There’s a steady stream of domestic and overseas demand for its products. KEI is globally competitive in markets like Australia, the US, and the Middle East, while many of its peers outside India lack manpower scale.
The highlight of the meeting was an opportunity to see up close the cables and wires it produces. Often when we meet companies, the chance to see their end products is limited, unless they are in consumer-facing sectors. Seeing the cables and wires in person demonstrated well KEI’s value proposition.
KEI Industries: A promising infrastructure play
Up close and personal: The sophistication of KEI’s cables and wires gave me greater appreciation of its product differentiation and competitive edge.
“Being in India again after three years reminded me how much I missed the sights and sounds while travelling around the cities. Visiting companies at their offices, as well as interacting with locals outside a corporate setting, gave me a good snapshot of the reality on the ground. Insights like that are crucial to our investment process.”
Kristy Fong, Senior Investment Director
Outlook
India remains one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. It is supported by a relatively stable macroeconomic environment. Public spending, a gradual revival in consumption and the easing of supply chain bottlenecks are likely to partially offset challenges from higher interest rates and a potential global recession. In a pro-growth budget for the 2024 fiscal year, the Indian government once again doubled down on its public capex push. This is a strategic priority to revive growth and create more jobs in the economy before the parliamentary elections next year.
The domestic economy is showing signs of recovery. Inflation has eased to manageable levels in recent months, while the Indian rupee is holding up well. There’s also momentum building in real estate. Infrastructure is being built and credit growth is gradually picking up, supported by a favourable policy backdrop. All of this is helping to sustain attractive earnings growth and a recovery in return on equities. On the other hand, India’s external balances remain a little precarious due to relatively high energy prices—India is a net oil importer—and because of falling exports. Against this backdrop, we expect our core quality holdings to continue to deliver resilient compounding earnings growth.
Longer term, India remains an attractive investment opportunity. It has a large consumer market, a predominantly young population, and an expanding middle class with rising levels of wealth and disposable income. It’s also an increasingly digitalised economy – with over 400 million internet users and rising.
Companies are selected for illustrative purposes only to demonstrate the investment management style described herein and not as an investment recommendation or indication of future performance. Past performance is not a guide to future results.