Positive on IT; will allocate money towards private, select PSU banks: BNP Paribas

BNP Paribas continues to remain positive on Indian technology companies, said Manishi Raychaudhuri, Asian Equity Strategist, Equity Cash Asia Pacific at the global investment firm said on Friday.

Raychaudhuri also said that work from home has been an additional tailwind for IT companies.

“We do like the Indian IT sector. In fact, across Asia ex-Japan we are overweight on the tech sector and the Indian IT sector is an integral part of that. However, our reasons for preferring Indian IT are more strategic, more structural in nature. We also think the entire IT services sector, this pertains to the IT hardware manufacturers as well, they have also benefited massively from remote working and work from the home initiative and even after COVID is behind us, some of these could actually last longer.”

BNP Paribas will continue to allocate money towards private and select public sector undertaking (PSU) banks, Raychaudhuri added.

“There would be two big chunks. First, would have to go to private banks and one can even dip in a small way into some of the select PSU banks because we are seeing a revival in corporate profitability which is sort of putting back the concerns on asset quality which the market have always had, but the larger chunk would be in the private sector banking universe and the second chunk would have to go to IT.”

The government's talk on privatisation is an encouraging sign, he further added.

“Almost every year over the past few years the government has set an aggressive target on divestment. One would have to watch out for exactly what gets done, but the initial signs and the seriousness that the government seems to be expressing in this regard is a positive phenomenon.”

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