Let me compare these 3 buckets. Since, I already compared them for me earlier-
1. Tata steel long- you have to view this co as a combined entity with tata metaliks. Since merger ratio is already fixed, you can’t view this as a standalone entity.
Another thing is they don’t own iron ore mine. A lot of recent profitability gains may be due to cheaper raw material inventory and not because of permanent increase in margins.
2. NMDC- From a pure business point of view, this is an excellent asset light, very high free cash flow business. But the use of that cash is very poor because of very bad promoter. they use the cash for CSR (above the required limit), dividends (too high), employees bonus, and inefficient steel plants leading to huge erosion of value of cash. The cash they generate is nearly worthless for the shareholder.
3. GPIL- they own the mines + it has a good promoter which uses the cash for expanding integrated steel capacity, for building high IRR power plant (170 cr additional EBITDA, 24% IRR on 750 cr capex), decent dividends (10-15% of profits only), and for further building specialty steel plant that would have high margins and ROE.
So, thats why instead of dividing my money among the three, I chose the one which has best features of first two.