18 important market insights from one of India’s biggest fund managers

Published by: Vivek Dubey

ICICI Prudential AMC’s CIO S Naren oversees assets under management worth approximately $70 billion as of May 31, 2023.

India is the best structural story with strong macros, challenge is to decide what kind of premium to pay.

Big move since March on strong flows partly explained by Japanese central bank printing a lot.

We are in a lower/moderate return environment, no longer in zero rate regime.

You can invest in debt and get 4-5%, even Japan will quit printing at some point.

Since March, it appears that markets go up in a straight line, won’t be like this.

Next 3-5 years we will see a fair amount of volatility, better to have products which can switch between equity and debt.

Top end of premium consumption is in great shape. Challenge is valuations, how to buy it! Even if we don’t buy now, won’t sell either.

We try and buy companies/sectors at the bottom of the cycle, but right now, nothing is at the bottom of the cycle.

Autos and new-age companies were underperformers last year, even these have picked up.

Some underperformance in IT and Pharma. Would buy Pharma which is a rare sector at bottom of the cycle.

Not clear about impact of ChatGPT etc. on Indian IT services companies.

Consensus across foreign analysts is that India is the best structural story.

Analysts have moved away from valuing companies based on earnings to valuing them on EV/EBITDA basis.

Top Indian banks’ lending safe, valuations very comfortable.

Like top banks, much easier to stay invested here, areas like microfinance, vehicle finance etc. doing well but requires much more research.

Power sector has reasonable valuations. Power demand very robust over 3-5 years.

We own many new-age companies, assigned these companies to my younger more growth oriented colleagues, but have to stay balanced. Cannot say yes to everything.

For more webstories, click below