The Indian markets have seen a good run in the last three months with the S&P BSE Sensex rising around 7 per cent and the Nifty50 moving up 7.5 per cent. The next leg of the market rally from here on, analysts suggest, will be driven by a growth in corporate earnings over the next few quarters. That said, they do not expect material / sharp downgrades to India Inc's earnings estimates despite headwinds for the economy.
'Just the amount of work which is there just to become more and more successful in banking. For this to happen you need to have leaders who understand technology.'
The banking sector emerged as an outlier when the rest of India Inc witnessed a slowdown in earnings in FY23. The combined net profit of listed public and private sector banks was up 39.4 per cent year-on-year (YoY) last financial year and their share in India's gross value added (GVA) or gross domestic product (GDP) at factor cost rose to a record high of nearly 1 per cent up, from 0.8 per cent a year ago. Listed banks' combined net profit grew to Rs 2.36 trillion in FY23, from Rs 1.69 trillion a year ago. In comparison, India GVA at current prices was up 15.2 per cent YoY at Rs 247 trillion in FY23; it was around Rs 214 trillion a year ago.
India's top listed companies reported their best-ever quarterly net profit of Rs 2.39 trillion in the September quarter of FY22, up 46.4 per cent year-on-year. The earnings were driven by a big surge in the profitability of banks, non-banking financial companies & insurance (BFSI), oil & gas, and metal & mining firms. The combined net profit of these three cyclical sectors were up 87 per cent YoY to a record high of Rs 1.53 trillion, up from Rs 82,000 crore a year ago and Rs 1.08 trillion in Q1FY22.
The recent sell-off in IT stocks such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has resulted in a sharp decline in the IT sector weighting in the Nifty50 index. The sector's weighting in the index has slipped to a five-year low of 12.2 per cent, down from the 17.7 per cent at the end of March 2022. The top IT companies - TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Tech Mahindra - accounted for 13.6 per cent of the index at the end of March this year.
Strong macroeconomic headwinds causing turbulence in the $245-billion Indian IT industry are yet to calm down. Top Indian IT services companies are likely to post a decline or just marginal growth in sequential revenue in Q1FY24 because of a soft discretionary spending environment. Though the first quarter is seasonally strong for IT firms, "June 2023 will be an exception", according to analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities.
Info Edge (India) reported a good fourth quarter for the 2022-23 financial year (Q4FY23) given depressed conditions in the Key IT segment. The billing growth of 13.7 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in recruitment was well ahead of market expectations. There was solid growth in realisations (up 5.5 per cent) as well as unique customers (up 7.7 per cent).
The rapidly growing banking, financial and services industry sector in India is expected to create about a million jobs every year for the next five years
'Chasing sectors which have reported strongest earnings is not always the right strategy for outperformance.'
With the merger between HDFC Bank and HDFC Ltd complete, analysts said the next key monitorable for the Street would be successful resolution of merger-related hiccups, including employee-related churn and roll out of complete banking services across branches. At the bourses, they expect the stock to perform in-line with the benchmark indices in the near-term. "There's usually an initial period of consolidation after a merger as the entities work towards integration.
Job postings declined on an annual basis in September but witnessed a marginal uptick compared to August this year, a report said on Tuesday. There was a fall in job postings in various sectors, including media and entertainment, home appliances, shipping and marine, IT and BPO/ITES compared to September 2021. For September 2022, the Monster Employment Index (MEI) showed that there was a 4 per cent decline in hiring activities on an annual basis but a 1 per cent rise on a month-on-month basis.
Of the 1,145 offers made this year, consulting firms made up 34 per cent, followed by banking, financial services and insurance, pharma/healthcare, IT/ITeS and FMCG/retail.
IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), in its Q4FY22 results, said the company's banking, finance services and insurance (BFSI) crossed the $10 billion milestone. This includes revenue from financial products, services and platforms. For Suresh Muthuswami, who recently took over as Chairman of North America, one of the focus will be to grow this percentage going ahead. The first step to grow the US market is hiring. Muthuswami said that the company will be hiring more in the US, especially from the campuses. In FY22 TCS hired over 7,000 people in the US and going ahead too the numbers will be similar.
Private equity investments in Indian companies grew 38 per cent to $62.2 billion last year, with inflows into Reliance Industries' telecom and retail ventures contributing nearly 40 per cent of the total value of the deals, a report said on Wednesday. Barring investments into Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail, the total deal value was down by 20 per cent over 2019 as the volume of large deals of more than $100 million dipped by a fourth, as per the report by Bain & Company and India Venture Capital Association. Overall investment activity remained muted from March to May last year due to COVID-led uncertainties and investor confidence recovered strongly in the second half to pre-COVID levels with late-stage and buyout deals witnessing increased traction, it said.
Roles ranging from digital marketing to wealth management are some of the emerging roles, notes Sekhar Garisa, CEO, foundit, a job search app.
Mutual funds' average cash holdings in equity schemes topped 6 per cent in February as fund managers went slow on deployment of new inflows on expectations of better buying opportunities amid uncertainties in the market.
'If you want it to grow well and serve the true needs of the economy, it needs a lot of freedom and flexibility, which comes in terms of the reform objective set by the regulator.'
From the beginning of 2021 Wipro has moved on to a new organisational structure. Analyst tracking the company are now wondering if CEO Thierry Delaporte's attempt to bolster Wipro's presence in the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) space by acquiring Capco for $1.45 billion is a step taken too early. Though many agree that Capco as a target may be good, but Wipro, which has been the most aggressive player in acquiring firms compared to its Indian players, does not have much to show in terms of performance as it continues to lag peers.
IT major TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan has reigned, and the company nominated its global head of the BFSI division K Krithivasan as the CEO Designate with immediate effect, the firm said on Thursday. Gopinathan will continue with the company till September 15, 2023, to provide transition and support to his successor.
'These companies hired in high numbers last year and are balancing that out this year by recruiting fewer freshers.'
The regulatory changes brought in by the insurance regulator and the amendments proposed to the Insurance Act by the Centre may herald a new dawn for the sector in India. This may result in insurers bringing out more consumer-led products, top honchos of general insurance companies of the country concurred at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit 2022.
Street may be ignoring TCS headwinds as the stock's peak valuation doesn't seem justified by BFSI weakness, likely higher US tax rates and stronger rupee, reports Ram Prasad Sahu.
Software major Tata Consultancy Services on Wednesday reported a 14.8 per cent rise in net income to Rs 11,392 crore for the fourth quarter of last fiscal against Rs 9,959 crore in the year-ago period. The country's largest technology services company by market value said its revenue rose 16.9 per cent to Rs 59,162 crore during the reporting season from Rs 50,591 crore a year ago.
The early bird results for the January-March 2022 quarter (Q4FY22) hint at a slowdown in corporate sector growth in the upcoming quarters. The combined net sales of the 81 early bird companies in the Business Standard sample were up 15.1 per cent year-on-year in Q4FY22; this was less than the 15.9 per cent YoY jump reported in Q3FY22. The slowdown could be much stronger for the domestic market-focused companies, including those in the banking, finance, and insurance (BFSI) space.
'Even during the pandemic we did it.' 'We think it's our responsibility to make sure that we manage the uncertainty.'
The Indian financial services space seems to be in a sweet spot as foreign investors have made a net investment of Rs 14,205 crore ($2.1 billion) in the sector in November amid strong credit growth and manageable non-performing loan portfolio. The investment comes following a net withdrawal of Rs 4,686 crore from financial services stocks in October on account of profit booking. Overall, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have made a net investment of Rs 36,238 crore in the country's equity markets in November.
AI and machine learning will only continue to grow in 2022, with a significant increase in the demand for such roles, notes Sekhar Garisa, CEO, Monster.com.
In order for life insurance customers to attain maximum benefits, it is crucial for the persistency ratio to be far higher than its current level, top executives of the industry said at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit on Thursday. The persistency ratio is a metric that measures the number of policyholders who continue paying renewal premium and is gauged at varying stages in the life of a policy. A higher persistency ratio is seen as an indicator of an insurance product that caters satisfactorily to the needs of a customer.
Financial institutions are 300 times more vulnerable to cyberattacks than any other industry.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Friday reported a 14.1 per cent rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 9,624 crore in the September 2021 quarter, aided by broad-based growth across geographies and verticals. The Mumbai-based company had logged a net profit of Rs 8,433 crore (excluding adjustment towards a legal claim) in the year-ago period. Its revenue grew 16.7 per cent to Rs 46,867 crore for the September 2021 quarter from Rs 40,135 crore in the year-ago period.
Slowing growth and execution challenges for Cognizant (CTSH) may well allow Infosys to overtake the former after a decade. Cognizant had marched ahead of Infosys in terms of revenue in the first quarter of financial year 2012-13. The Nasdaq-listed IT services firm's performance in Q3 and the guidance for Q4 and full-year 2022 suggest that it could take time for Cognizant to see the expected improvement in performance from its decision to restructure.
The Indian IT industry will stage a "strong recovery" in 2021-22 with a revenue growth of up to 11 per cent, ratings agency Crisil said on Wednesday. The recovery will be led by increasing outsourcing and accelerating digital transformation services mainly in sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), healthcare, retail and manufacturing, it said. As per Nasscom, the IT services industry grew 2.7 per cent to $99 billion in 2020-21.
Backed by technology banks are expanding the branch network - and adding more to the workforce.
After a turnaround in performance by Indian equity markets since July that has seen the S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50 wipe out the year-to-date losses, analysts suggest investors start nibbling into stocks that are focused on the domestic economy. While they say intermittent corrections, led by policies of global central banks and other economic data, cannot be ruled out, analysts expect India's relative outperformance among global equity markets to continue as it looks better placed with a healthy economic recovery, and remains one of the fastest growing major economies. In this backdrop, Neeraj Chadawar, head of quantitative equity strategy at Axis Securities, believes that amid global slowdown, aggressive tightening by the central banks, and preference for domestic interests first (by the local government), export-oriented themes are likely to be muted or will deliver conservative returns in the near-term.
IT industry's growth will largely be led by next-generation technologies and services with areas like data, cloud and cybersecurity expected to see huge incremental growth, Wipro CEO Theirry Delaporte said. Wipro has also closed several acquisitions in the second half of FY21 across key markets like the US and Europe, which has helped the Bengaluru-based company strengthen its local presence and service offerings, he said in his note in the company's FY2020-21 annual report. "We know that industry growth will largely be led by next-generation technologies and services. "We can therefore expect to see huge incremental growth in areas such as digital, cloud, data, engineering, cybersecurity.
India has a huge untapped population which doesn't have facilities for financial aid and insurance, and it is perhaps plausible to look at the option of having niche players catering to smaller sectors akin to non-banks and microfinance institutions in lending, said Rakesh Joshi, member (Finance & Investment), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai). Speaking at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit, Joshi said, "Today, most of our insurance companies operate at a national level. There is arguably a case for having differentiated operations, which cater to niche sectors the same way we have non-banking financial companies (NBFC) and microfinance institutions in lending." "The capital requirement for niche players may not be as large as those having national ambitions. "Enabling these niche players, which require lower capital, will enhance the penetration in areas which hitherto had not seen traction from large players," he said.
But the industry's chief executives remain confident of the long-term growth potential of NBFCs in India, given their specialised lending on the asset side, last-mile reach, and a well-capitalised balance sheet. "Over the years, NBFCs have faced many crises.
Exuding confidence in sustaining the tempo of credit growth, public sector bankers said on Wednesday that consolidation in the public sector bank (PSB) space has given them a robust base to scale. The privatisation of PSBs can be done through divestment of government stake to a wider base of investors without haste. There is nothing to worry about at this point (high credit offtake) as underwriting standards and risk management are much better.
It won't be easy for the banking sector to better its performance every quarter, predicts Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The price of bitcoin, the bestselling cryptocurrency, has shrunk nearly three times this year to mark the fate of such digital assets. Crashing prices, regulatory uncertainty and taxes have put Indian crypto exchanges in troubled waters. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's budget for FY23 announced a 30 per cent tax on any income from the transfer of virtual digital assets.
