Overweight on India, see interest in fintech, e-commerce stocks: BNP Paribas

Manishi Raychaudhuri, Asian equity strategist, equity cash Asia Pacific at BNP Paribas, on Wednesday, said that fintech and e-commerce related stocks are seeing huge interest.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, he said, “Fintech (financial technology), e-commerce, internet, tech megatrends, which fascinate are a very significant part of our investors today. They are becoming available for secondary market investment in India and Southeast Asia and it's interesting that this is happening at a time when the traditional North Asian markets, particularly China, are a little mired by regulatory uncertainties affecting these sectors. So investors who really want to play these tech megatrends, are faced with an opportunity, they are faced with an additional avenue of playing these sectors outside China. Therefore, this is possibly the most interesting development occurring at this point of time,” he said.

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On Indian equity markets, Raychaudhuri said, “We are overweight. The transition to India, which we did about a month ago, has worked out quite well. The valuations do look a bit frothy, particularly in the top rung stocks, but India has always been a market like that; one has to be willing to pay expensive valuations for high quality.”

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He further said that the firm continues to have a significant holding in Indian frontline IT companies. “We are still maintaining a significant presence in the frontline Indian IT space in our Asian model portfolio and there is no reason to change or tamper around with that position for now. Some stocks may appear a little expensive, but when earnings estimates are moving up, something that appears relatively expensive today might appear cheap tomorrow. The real issue here is earnings estimates continuing to move up and for now, we are keeping faith on that,” Raychaudhuri said.

For the entire interview, watch the video