MRF Ltd - Strong moat & value play

Thanks Pranav for the thread!

Few Questions based on cursory look -

  • Based on screener numbers, there is no significant top line growth from Sept 2013 on QoQ basis but operating margin has gone up from 14% to 24%. As you mentioned there has been softening raw material prices and that can lead to two things - flat revenue and increased margins. So my questions are -
  1. Is there volume increase?
  2. Do they have pricing power? (I’m inclined to say no based on Chinese competition you mentioned)
  3. Margin increase is purely because of raw materials or has there been productivity improvement as well?
  • You mentioned that tyre market in India is worth 50k Cr and MRF approx has sales of ~13k Cr. Ignoring other segments, one can say that they have 25% market share. Can they grow market share?

  • A quick search shows that - only MRF and Balkrishna Industries have been able to scale up margins in last 2-3 years but Apollo and JK Tyres have not been able to. So one can “claim” that MRF might be the most “efficient”. What brings in this efficiency?

Regards,
Rupesh