A sharp rally in domestic stocks from June lows has once again rendered Indian markets expensive to their emerging-market (EM) peers. The 12-month forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple for the Nifty50 Index is around 20.6x - 82 per cent higher than 11.3 per cent for the MSCI EM Index. India's valuation premium has hit a five-month high. This is on the back of sharp outperformance to EM and global peers from June lows and also due to earnings downgrades, following the April-June quarter of 2022-23 earnings.
Given the strong growth in Asia and easy monetary stance taken by central banks other than the US Federal Reserve (US Fed), overseas investors will soon start re-investing in risky assets, says Abhiram Eleswarapu, head of equity research, BNP Paribas Securities India.
Net sales growth for the quarter ended December (Q3FY20) was 4.5 per cent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for companies that have declared their results so far, compared to an 8.4 per cent rise in the first half of the financial year. This indicates that there could be a further rise in days' sales of inventory.
2019 appears a story of two halves for Indian equities - a more difficult first half might precede a stronger second half, said Abhiram Eleswarapu, bottom, left, Head of India Equity Research, BNP Paribas in an interview with Ashley Coutinho.