Indian Defense Sector

Right now government is spending money like anything. So all PSU and private companies doing business with government, directly or indirectly will do well.

Private companies, banks are not doing well, there is liquidity crunch and there is high interest rates. Very difficult to survive.

Unless the next cycle of interest rates decrease start, we will not see much movements in other sectors.

But as @1957 Om bhai suggested, defense, railway, infra will do. Government is actually spending. We just have to see this government should be remain in power for the next 5 years and we will be fine. :smiley:

(invested from lower level, not a buy recommendation. Please do your own analysis)

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Yes, it is the Govt capex push which is driving infra , Railway , renewable , defence sectors.
Pvt capex is yet to take place in a big way, though it has started gradually.
So to encourage PVT capex spends, the Govt has implemented a lot of PLI schemes by awarding incentives to pvt sector to kick start Pvt capex in a big way.

On consumption led demand side , perhaps the govt may try to give enough money in hands of people to spend. Tax concessions , interest rate reduction , interest rate subsidy for affordable housing etc may help further.

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Disclosure: I’m invested in defense stocks.

You post is not well-researched and very emotional. It’s important to be factual and rather than be political and biased. I list down fallacies below.

1) capex as a % of GDP is 0.5 in 2000s?? Please do some basic research. It was never this low and can never be. In fact, we had the highest investment(Public+Private) as a % of GDP in 2000’s infra boom. Now, its primarily the government and private capex is still anemic as a % of GDP. To say that the govt didn’t spend in 2000 is factually wrong. It was spent, but misallocation, corruption led to NPA crisis of last decade.

2) cyclicality of a business and stock market rotation are not the same. FMCG as a sector never had a degrowth in decades. I would say similar with IT (barring 2008,09), pharma.Quality and certainity of earnings is important and hence why certain stocks and sectors will always command higher multiples. A rational investor, would never pay similar multiples for certainity vs cyclicality in earnings, revenue

3) The best performing stocks in 20003-2007 were infact infra,power,steel, real estate.Please do your homework

4) Current govt’s major capex push only started after covid. 2023-2024 was an exception as we had a 30% growth in infra and defense allocation. It will more likely taper to a sustainable low double digit as its estimated in 20224-25 as fiscal deficit as a % GDP is on a gliding path to a normalized level. It’s important to factor this into growth and earnings in infra stocks. In case of defense, import substitution also helped domestic firms


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@1957 , Om Bhai, I am holding some defense and some railway stocks. I have seen all your posts, and you seem to be enthusiastic as well as strong proponent of current PSU rally for some valid reasons and my views resonate with you. So I have a query…Not asking any buy sell advice…but tomorrow if Govt change or their policy towards railway and defense changes, then what is your crietria to sell defense and railway? Have you kept some selling criteria, when you would.like to get rid of these stocks? Any stop losses or any marked performance related to revenue or profit? Assuming , you are not marrying with these stocks ,like Pulak Prasad of Nalanda Capital? Kindly throw some light.

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@1957

  1. gross fixed capital(which includes govt capex) as % of GDP

  2. Sunil Singhania pointed out that public sector defense companies trading at 17-18 times sales are experiencing excessive valuations.
    Sunil Singhania warns against small and mid-caps seeing meteoric rise, says overall market valuations reasonable

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With my limited knowledge I can share few points here.

  • Stocks are over valued. Few are in bubble state for sure, because there is no insights on their current happening (we only know last quarterly result and few news here and there) like BDL, krishna, bharat forge, etc.
  • I find HAL, Mazdock still under valued. (not a buy recommendation)
  • Defense cycles are quite long and it take lots of time for government to decide on something, frame a policy, allocate budget and start working. There are also lots of parameters from international arms companies, other countries, politics and so on.
  • Right now it look like government is very much clear on their agenda, they want to establish India as a defense hub. Second, there is huge potential in terms of business, because of the India’s current foreign policy and strategic position we are in to. This business will definitely flourish.
  • But current government has to continue for next few year, which may add risk to this scenario.
  • We may see news related to this in the upcoming budget in this month. So this may further push this sector.

Let’s see how this goes. Depending on the risk appetite of the investor, one can take the decision. Also I would advise everyone to do their due deligence on each company before investing, at least to basic calculations of valuation, PE, current orders, management, policy, etc.

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