Sahil's Portfolio

[aakash_sultania]

Hi Sahil,

I see that you are interested in Sarthak Metals. In their recent disclosure there is a related party transaction with cumulative sum of 150cr, I am not sure if I am reading it correct.

Any views on the same? Please pardon me, if the question seems stupid, I am very new to investing,

[Worldlywiseinvestors]

Its 15 crores, lakhs are the units that is used

Disc: not invested. Not studying at the moment.

[sahil_vi]

Its been a long time since i wrote on VP on my pf thread (i continue to write on company threads). I think i owe the forum an explanation & some updated thoughts.
2022 has been a year of constant & powerful learning for me personally. Let’s summarise. I have learned that investing is about a lot of things but its most importantly about balancing between extremes along many different dimensions.

1. The tension opportunity cost & letting businesses compound: The primary reason that equity returns are volatile is because underlying business cycles & competitive landscape are volatile. There are years where Laurus labs gives investors decades worth of returns & then there is 2022 where years worth of returns can evaporate. The problem is that we as a group tend to extrapolate everything. That is the very nature of the modelling exercise. You’d model for 15% growth, 20% growth or 25% growth. What we dont model is the volatility of the growth. The +25% CAGR might play out as: +50%, -10%, 0%, +50% & so on. This is the nature of most industries & businesses because there are too many dynamic self adjusting systems at play here: ARV demand, ARV pricing, ARV supply, increased competitive intensity, new therapies, growth of CDMO, questions over sustainability of CDMO growth given size of CDMO (& comps with other large domestic CDMOs). The underlying business volatility manifests itself in critical questions investors need to answer. Am i going to hold through a downcycle, or sell out, only to revisit later on. the answer cannot & will never be a once answer fits all. That is because different investors have different life circumstances, experiences, objectives & goals. Just sampling 2 from the large combinations of these:
   (i) A seasoned investor with a > 100 cr portfolio who has a well diversified portfolio & is financially independent, been in stock markets for 20 years & broadly knows what they are doing. If they have had meaningful interactions with Dr chava, visited laurus’s plants, listened to each concall & knows the strong non-arv pipeline lined up as well as large capex laurus is executing for CDMO & bio, they might actually be tempted to buy more at lower valuations as arv cycle plays out.
   (ii) A relatively inexperienced investor who has orders of magnitude smaller portfolio, is just getting started out & really only have 3-4 years of experience. Running a much more concentrated portfolio that (i). Perhaps for them (this is me), it would be arrogant to overestimate their ability to deeply understand Laurus’s competitive advantages & thus claim for it to be ok to buy & hold. Perhaps for them, the higher churn (selling on business momentum breakdown) also provides an ability to study an order of magnitude more businesses (its difficult to overcome ownership bias & study a random business as if i own it) as they look to upskill, learn & improve their ability to understand the competitive advantages of a business from the lens of predictive power for future earnings growth potential.
   I firmly believe (contrary to many other investors opinion) that even for a single investor the answer cannot be a binary. The answer has to depend on the factors at hand: business, industry, longer term growth potential, the current valuation & most importantly my understanding of the business & industry & my confidence in my understanding. The way things stand today, i am more than happy to hold shivalik through temporary business downturns as long as the medium term (2-3 year) visibuiity of demand led by EVs looks strong & perhaps even add more at saner valuations. At same time,
   saregama at 45x earnings might get dubbed as a consumer play, but the earnings growth visibility is simply not strong enough (this is a personal opinion). This is why i was happy to sell saregama (2nd player by revenue & subsriber base) around 45x earnings but buy shivalik (unquestionable indian leader with elements of global cost & quality leadership) around 27x TTM earnings with a hope that i am able to add more at lower levels. A latest co i find in similar bucket as Shivalik is XPRO which seems to be giving investors an opportunity to back up the truck & load up (more on xpro later).
2. Whether it makes sense to pay up for structural growth: There are multiple examples available of companies where structural growth with long visibility exists. Eg:
   (i) data pattern (works on full systems engineering like Deep space radars, avionics for Tejas, guidance system for brahmos: 30% cagr guidance)
   (ii) MTAR (Bloom; largest client has 30% growth guidance for 1 decade, makes rocket engines for Agni V, GSLV, PSLV)
   (iii) Rainbow children hospital (guidance of 20-25% growth coupled with structural nature of medical expenditure & strong capabilities in tertiary & quaternary specialised paediatric healthcare).
   The conundrum for an investor is whether to invest in such cos & pay up for strong capabilities & visibility of growth, or not. On the one hand, purely on the mathematics of returns it would make sense to allocate maximum capital to the sector which is going through an upcycle like lending: leading NBFCs like MAS, 2nd rung banks like IDFC first, south india bank. And i do have a 30% allocation to lenders like above. But where do we draw the line? What MTAR, Rainbow or Data pattern would provide to my portfolio is a source uncorrelated cashflows thereby reducing the concentration risk of portfolio source of profits/cashflows. Right now i attend to resolve this conundrum by allocating small to high valuation cos where earnings visibility is strong: ~10%. Without this allocation (token as it may seem), its too hard to finish my homework & be ready to load up in case of a 2020 style market wide crash
3. Revisiting your thesis: A boon or bane?: When i first heard about eminem’s love life
   
   (look at the spouses section) i used to think how this was possible. How could you love someone enough to marry them, then unlove them enough to divorce then, then again love them enough to marry them, & finally conclude that it was better to be divorced.
   it no longer shocks me. Not only are investors emotions cyclical (finding relationships which imbibe a secular trend of ever increasing love, respect, friendship remains the holy grail of a human relationship), but investors’ feelings towards a single stock are also dynamic, ever evolving & sometimes cyclical. A willingness to re-examine one’s thesis or anti thesis for a stock is the basis of any healthy self-aware investor’s psyche. This is because we can never know everything. People change. Cultures change. Systems change. Companies change. Industries change. Change, is the only constant. I started studying XPRO many months ago after one of the investors i look up to (ashish kacholia sir) bought it. At that point, my due diligence seemed to indicate that Xpro might not have any moats, since jindal was also developing biaxial dielectric films & claimed to be near breakthrough. Subsequently jindal did announce development of the films.
   Xpro India - getting bigger? - #25 by mmali09
   Well, then anti-thesis has played out right? Right?
   I happened to talk to an investor/analyst who has done a lot of due diligence on xpro & capacitor films space (talking with Xpro’s clients etc). What i learned completely turned my understanding on its head. The very first question i had asked in the only XPRO concall was around this topic. His answer made sense then, it made a lot more sense now.
   
   
   
   Highlights added by me but here is a summary:
   Xpro has years worth of experience, bespoke processes, customised design & configuration for the extrusion machinery & years of relationships with some of largest capacitor makers in india. It is unlikely jindal will be able to disrupt all of this. besides, Xpro would be 3x jindal’s size in 1-2 years. Economies of scale will play out. Already playing out. Xpro’s price is 20% or so cheaper than jindal’s price which it quotes on calls. Besides that, Export opportunity at each level: capacitor film, capacitor, finished white goods is massive. Electronics export out of india is growing at 50% CAGR or so right now. Every established elecronics maker wants to set shop in india. Apple will export more iPhones out of india than any country (maybe ex china). Samsung has largest display factory in Noida. With semicon ecosystem developing over 5-7 years this trend will only accelerate. Besides expots, India’s import substitution opportunity in capacitor Films is massive. Xpro’s output used to be 33% of market 1-2 years ago. it might be closer to 20-25% now due to industry growth & xpro being supply constrained the demand is not constrained (look at the realizations. We can already hazard a guess from the coex realization / ton vs biax realization / ton that biax might be much more profitable than coex.) All of this coupled together makes xpro an attractive investment at no-growth valuations of 15x-18x earnings (new capacities will come online in 1 year or so).
   Only time can tell whether revisiting thesis can prove to be a boon or bane. As with most things in life, this might turn out to be a “it depends” kinda answer. what it depends on though is something i still dont understand.
4. Turnarounds vs structural growth: I Caveat this point by saying that when i say structural growth, what i mean is probabilistic growth of 20% or so for 3-4 years. This almost never plays out as we think. But is a framework for trying to find investable opportunities. I personally find myself much more comfortable investing in structural growth cos executiing well. Turnarounds make me uncomfortable. This is because there is a large uncertainty over when (if at all) they turn around. Specially when it comes to global commodities like US generic API or formulations, it is very difficult to develop conviction for me to invest in an alembic or a natco or a caplin no matter the valuation simply because it is extremely difficult to develop visibility about the revival (reduction in competitive intensity, evolution of the supply side - reduction or increase in competitive intensity). perhaps my attempt at developing comfort here is south india bank which i bought at 0.3x book with 12% roe, 12% growth. the growth is not something to write home about. Unlike IDFCF where visibility of 2% ROA, 17% ROE over 2-3 years is strong, no such visibility here, but at 0.3x book SIB was too cheap given the quality of management, Murali’s preference of quality over growth at any cost, his experience heading agri at ICICI, his walking the talk with the post 2020 loan book which is now 50% of entire loan book, its pristine quality WRT npas, higher NIMs, even qualitative insights from the charges created by SIB pre-oct-2020 post-oct-2020. This remains a category where i am skeptical to invest given GARP type cos can provide 20-25% earnings growth + some rerating if one gets the valuation & biz cycle right. This remains a bucket i will tend to visit only when the valuations hit me on the head with a 4x4 (like SIB: thesis of 0.3x book to 1x book (justifiable since net provisions is negative due to large write backs) in 1-2 years). Even in a turnaround, i want to see clear, quantifiable triggers which i can see enable me to have a good XIRR (of course everything is probabilistic but we need to know what to expect, or what to model)

Disclaimer: I am invested in everything.

[Lavanya_Tomar]

Promoters stealing from company? | CASE STUDY: Mirza International (Red Tape)

Just found this video Sahil Sir

[rajasekharmekala]

Hi Sahil,

A while ago, I remember that you used to tweet about IIFL finance. What are your current thoughts on this business? Any specific reasons for not pursuing it?

[Rohit_Dubey]

First of all, It’s a good video to learn how to perform related party analysis. On the other hand, if you look at any company closely, you’ll find a lot of “should have” and “could have” things. All the businesses are like human beings, they’ll have some grey areas and such price corrections make you focus on those grey areas, but the most important thing will be to have a holistic overview and factor such grey areas in your entry price.

Disclosure : No Investment in Mirza

[Gautam_Chopra]

[Piyush_Bhagade]

Hi Sahil,
I am a new investor and although you have no way of knowing this I voted on ‘No’ on your twitter poll which asked about you managing money professionally. The reason for that is personal interest. I find your content across platforms to be very thorough and if you managed professional money I’d hear less from you.
In summary, this is a thank you post for sharing your knowledge openly and I think you are following this great trend of great investors. Best of luck

[Vaibhav_Agarwal1]

@sahil_vi -it been long you have not Posted any update on your portfolio or recent changes here …?? any specific reason?

[Riyansh2112]

Hello Sahil,

Have you read about Mayur Uniquoters and Aptus Housing Finance ?

Thanks

[satyajitpatra2005]

@sahil_vi

My 3 picks will outperform the set of overvalued names thrown by the public.

Racl
Mastek
IDFC first bank

What I intend to do on my side is to create an index of all names thrown which were indeed above 120 normalized pe and track that index versus my 3 picks.

Part of the reason I wanted to set up this friendly bet is that one of the easiest ways to learn something is to make an outlandish claim. People run from all 4 directions to dismiss that claim. And in doing so, end up teaching you something. heads I win, tails I learn a lot & thus I win bigger.

One more year to go…
Its 1 - 1 till now.

Though you have existed IDFCF

[AJain]

Hi Sahil,
Could you shed some light on the recent downward revenue guidance of Inmode? Is it a one-off quarter or sign of things to come with growth slowing down? There is also a lot of chatter with regard to the Israel-Hamas confrontation disrupting their overall operation and sales (since it is an Israeli company)

i

[AJain]

From Page 24 of Form 20-F: Risks Related to Our Operations in Israel

“Political, economic and military instability in Israel may impede our ability to operate and harm our financial results. Our principal executive offices and research and development facilities as well as our thirdparty manufacturers are located in Israel. In addition, all of our subcontractors are located in Israel.”

"Our commercial insurance may leave us subject to a risk of a loss if a terrorist attack or act of war occurs.

Our insurance does not cover losses that may occur as a result of an event associated with the security situation in the Middle East or for any resulting disruption in our operations. Although the Israeli government has in the past covered the reinstatement value of direct damages that were caused by terrorist attacks or acts of war, we cannot be assured that this government coverage will be maintained or, if maintained, will be sufficient to compensate us fully for damages incurred and the government may cease providing such coverage or the coverage might not suffice to cover potential damages. Any losses or damages incurred by us could have a material adverse effect on our business. Any armed conflicts or political instability in the region would likely negatively affect business conditions generally and could harm our results of operations."

[rankamoksh]

this is in relation to which company

[sahil_vi]

My apologies, i respect this forum a lot and do not want to clutter it with transaction level details which might just be noise to most people. Over time i have analyzed what i have been up to. What i have seen is that there is a lot of alpha in indian equity markets but one has to be very strict in the process to capture it. Most people are unable to capture these alphas due to a lax process. So i wanted to share my current process first before i talk about what i have been up to:

My xirr over last 4 years now, is high, when i look back to see what worked for me & what didnt, where i made mistakes. I see 5 things which must all be present in my process. I will also talk about what makes it difficult for everyone to achieve this alpha from my meetings with countless investors.

Must haves in process

1. what i learned from graham : Low Starting valuations. in absolute i need to think company is undervalued. As we all know valuation is very subjective. So its better to err on side of caution. Eg: MTAR is expensive, dixon, kaynes expensive. RACL at 5 pe wasnt expensive, Aurionpro at 8-9 pe growing 30% with leading IP based CreditTech products, despite its checkered past was not expensive because of the management changes that happened (Ashish Rai). But one must keep in mind, that TTM p/e or p/b is not valuation. Valuation is a subjective exercise in summarizing the cashflows from next X years. To that extent, valuation comes after business understanding not before. I cannot value that, which i dont understand. An NBFC at 5 p/b or a fintech at 80 p/e (NPST) can be undervalued if we clearly understand & are convinced by their growth triggers & competitive advantages. But definitely need to remain on our toes regarding execution since comfort of entry valuations is absent. But dismissing such opportunities out of hand without understanding the business models would be a grave mistake of omission.
2. what i learned from PEAD people: Catalyst in next 6-12 months. This is key to get high XIRR. I dont want to buy & wait for 4 years to make returns. In many cases catalyst is management change (Redtape, Aurionpro), in some cases, high growth (Aurionpro, Xpro, RACL, Angel), in many cases mixture. In some cases, there is a lack of understanding of business model (NPST). We gauge this by talking to fellow investors. As wide/diverse a set as possible. if we understand it well (you’d be surprised by the high number of people who just see p/b or p/e before understanding business model). In some cases, it can be a reduction in 1-off expenses coupled with high growth in volumes in a business model with inherent operating leverage (like MCX).
3. what i learned from Munger: High ROCE/Moats: Business is a competition for profits. From competitors, substituors, suppliers, clients. Even unrelated businesses. Netflix says, day trading is cvompetition for me. Thus, it is extremely important for us to understand the durable competitive advantages of the business we are owning because without that, it is simply an exercise in google sheet forecasting & not in thoughtful prediction. Of course, tailwinds change. Competitive intensity changes. SRF setting up capacitor film lines. Cosmo getting into metallizing first, and aspiring to set up capacitor film lines. All of these are direct attacks on Xpro’s business. They need to defend. We as investors, need to anticipate & prepare for such attacks by understanding whether our business can withstand such attacks before they happen. Xpro investors might think today, whether the terminal value goes down, whether margins erode. Ive been thinking since before i invested. My understanding as it stands today, is that for at least next 3-4 years their competitive advantages are in place & secure. What happens after 3-4 years is anyone’s guess. I am as eager to learn. But in mean while the profits can grow 3-4x for xpro & moeny will get made already. This reasoning has to happen before the investment, & is powered by understanding of what makes the business unique & difficult to replicate. THis is an evolving picture. My understanding of what makes RACL unique has also evolbed over last 3 years of owning it, and definitely hellped by the plant visit we did recently. Similarly, Saregama, shivalik, xpro, aurionpro, racl are all companies with high moats/competitive advantages built over years. But one has to track their evolution over time. It is NOT enough to buy & forget it, as they say. ANy such cognitive or real world short-cut is sure to reduce our XIRR. Understanding what are the unique capabilities & value addition activities done by the business is key to understanding why ROCE is sustainably high that this is also a key variable in determinign the stretchability of valuation (kitna uupar jaaayega).
4. What i learned from stan drukenmiller: Ability to take decisions with partial information, specially in environments where markets are stretched, companies will move on purely narrative, so its important to pull trigger first, with say, only 70% thesis formed, and to be willing to change my mind & sell if i learn facts which are enough to weaken the thesis (in the following days, weeks, months). Necessarily in such a style churn is high. But unless i have a decent net worth invested, i dont have enough skin in game to go deep enough to understand the company best. Chase managements, distributors, suppliers to learn more about the company.
5. what i learned from fellow investors like @sharemarketgen_ : Unwillingness to take a business drawdown. if i see slowdown in business, then i must sell regardless of how much i like the underlying business & its competitive advantages. This is also somewhat similar to technofunda style which many folks practice. Shivalik, saregama at high PE + slowdown in growth are a sell at least in my framework.

I am very selective in set of companies i invest in, because i demand all of these characteristics to be present in the company i invest in Many ideas come & go, most are ignored/discarded.

Element of luck. What is luck?

Of course, all these are possible due to the pitch we play on, prepared by Modiji, Yogiji i am fortunate enough to be able to find so many amazing companies despite having a strict criterion because of the awesome economic conditions we have right now in our country flowing from the awesome political conditions. Politics is upstream from economics & must be understood. The reason we have strong growth, improving logistics, improving law&order, are all due to great policies. On the other hand, poor policies such as excessive freebies which encourage uneconomic behavior from populations (this is always a fine balancing act, there is no right or wrong here) is extremely detrimental to the economic health of a unit of population & thus must also be tracked equally closely. The reason i need to understand & appreciate these facts is because they create the economic & market conditions which allow me to follow my process. The reason i can choose to discard companies growing at 15% the reason i can follow a strict process of seeking every condition i have outlined above, is the policy framework of where we stand. CHoosing to turn a blind eye to this, is detrimental to our overall understanding of markets because it makes us overestimate our skill & underplay the luck involved. The reason i can invest in so many great companies is because i happen to be in the right place at the right time today. Tomorrow, if facts change, i would definitely need to adjust/relax my process too. And i am more than willing to do that.

Current portfolio (subject to change any time)

Current portfolio with thesis (in order of decreasing allocation):

1.Aurionpro: Started out being a turnaround play (management change, ashish rai a leading professional who left his job being MD of at FIS, APAC+MEA to buy a 10% stake in a co to turn it around, plug the accounting holes, create world leading IP for creditTech right here in Bharat & take it to the world)
2. Angel one: Discount Broking in India is one of most misunderstood businesses now. It is not cyclical in the traditional sense. The F&O volumes keep going up. at 11x earnings + 4% dividend yield this was a no brainer. There are management actions to keep increasing terminal value of biz by leveraging the digital first distribution they have built.
3. XPRO: Only domestic manufacturer of capacitor films with large & growing Bharatiya & global TAM. Import substitution using capex they are doing in FY24/25/26 will play out, it is difficult to replicate the setup due to customization & configurations involved. This is a complex machine. Some risk to terminal value in case SRF succeeds, but that is itself 4 years out. I expect profits to grow 3-4x in meanwhile.
4. Shilchar: One of best transformer cos in the country if we see their execution track record. Best in class margins, ROCE, growth. Healthy mix of renewables led capex. healthy mix of exports which is higher margins. Key advantages on supplier side. Deeply cyclical sector so need to be very closely tracked. Large demand, lead times in both USA & India leading to strong order books. Strong guidance in AGM as well of 800cr revenue in 3 years.
5. PDS: A very unique sourcing platform for global retailers & apparel brands. Unique acquisition/hiring techniques leading to a culture of innovation & excellence rather than internal politics & decay (can totally relate to this fact given i work at a large corporate). Guidance to increase PAT 3x in 5 years. valuations are not very demanding if one normalizes for margins & interest costs.
6. NPST: Relatively recent co i started studying. very interesting line of business. They are the TPAP & TSP which enables payments in UPI stack by providing payment APIs to payment aggregators such as AirPay, CashFree (think of these as the lower sized competitors of razorpay, ccavenue, billdesk) for P2M transactions. There are no fintech competitors in this space (only banks like hdfc, sbi, axis) which makes it a blue ocean. And the fact that they had the vision & courage & foresight to venture into this business even before UPI took off during covid, tells us about the management capabilities. Very good business model which is clear in the profitability & fast market adoption of their solutions.

About 70% of portfolio is invested in above 6 positions.

PS: Please do not overindex on any companies i have mentioned because i am liable to sell them at any point if i find better opportunities without prior notice. I am not a SEBI registered advisor. Do your own due diligence before investing in any companies. It is your risk capital. Your gains, your pains.

[Alok_Shukla]

Hey Sahil, would you be willing to share when was the first time these companies came into your radar? Lets say NPST for example , I just want understand how this company looked like at that time to understand a filtering process. Thanks

[pankaj_xxxx]

Hi @sahil_vi. What has been your xirr this FY and last FY?

[RSChari]

Hi Sahil

A lot of appreciation for your approach and your intention to share.

The way you have been identifying winners, the only question i have for you is if you have thought seriously about starting Research services.

I remember you conducted a survey ( on twitter ) if people would pay for / accept your research advice ( or something similar). Can you share the results of that survey and your views.

Thanks

[AkshayBharde]

What amazing clarity! Very well put Sahil. This one is even more enaborate than the Twitter post you have written in this regard. Process is everything. As a new investor (Direct stocks, 15 years been in MF) who is making so many mistakes, this is like a gem for me. This feels like a spider web to me. You build it & wait for a pray to get caught. which is exactly what I want to build. But it’s extremely tough. I am a culprit of trying to find short cuts. But slowly understanding that short cuts are sureshot ways to underperform. My question is when you say that valuation comes after one has understood the business, what’s your screening criteria? I mean how do you stumble onto these businesses having catalysts? Is it pure serendipity (like from your network)? Or you also have some sort of process that alerts you when something interesting comes up? Or may be some screener query that fetches you this? Or something else? Or a combination of all?

[sahil_vi]

@Alok_Shukla

Lets say NPST for example , I just want understand how this company looked like at that time to understand a filtering process.

i randomly browse all screener results. NPST stood out there this quarter when they declared Q2 results. Growth creates value. Competitive advantages create value. Once we understand value creation, then we can do valuation.

@pankaj_xxxx

Hi @sahil_vi. What has been your xirr this FY and last FY?

pretty high. Ive been told by the moderators that discussing xirr on forum is akin to advertising so ive been told not to do so so i have stopped doing so

@RSChari

The way you have been identifying winners, the only question i have for you is if you have thought seriously about starting Research services.

Might do something soon. I am weighing the pros & cons of doing it.

^ these were the results but please be ware that **people can say anything on twitter polls, it would be unthoughtful to extrapolate that to real life.
In reality this number might be in single digits only.

@AkshayBharde

My question is when you say that valuation comes after one has understood the business, what’s your screening criteria? I mean how do you stumble onto these businesses having catalysts? Is it pure serendipity (like from your network)? Or you also have some sort of process that alerts you when something interesting comes up? Or may be some screener query that fetches you this? Or something else? Or a combination of all?

Everything. Screener, valuepickr, twitter, contacts, randomly browsing results on screener.

Process:

1. Idea comes
2. I evaluate the financials. If the financials are healthy i proceed to step 3.
3. I try to understand why are financials healthy & is the strength of the growth & business (moats, management) captured in the existing valuations or not. A company at 80 pe which is growing 500% is not overvalued provided we have data backed rational confidence in its growth. 9/10 companies in such a universe would slowdown in growth & that destroys shareholder value, but we need to find the 1 which wont slowdown by digging deeper. But the setup is definitely attractive. The rest of process (scuttlebutt, reading) is to figure out whether the numbers are sustainable or not.