Analysis & Valuations

This page contains our articles on financial statement analysis and valuations of stocks.

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Annual Report Review: Gruh Finance

In continuation of this series on annual report review, here is my review of the FY15 report of India’s leading non-banking financial company, Gruh Finance.

Click here to download the PDF review (11 MB file), or read it in the panel below.

Let me know your thoughts and questions on this review in the Comments section of this post, plus any additional thoughts from your own review of Gruh’s FY15 annual report. Also share any suggestion(s) you may have to make future reviews better and easier for your understanding.

Statutory Warning: This is NOT an investment advice to buy or sell shares. Please make your own decision, as blindly acting on anyone else’s research and opinions can be injurious to your wealth. I do not own the stock, but despite this, my analysis may be biased, and wrong. I have been wrong many times in the past. I am a registered Research Analyst as per SEBI (Research Analyst) Regulations, 2014 (Registration No. INH000000578).

Annual Report Review: Ashok Leyland

In continuation of this series on annual report review, here is my review of the FY15 report of India’s leading commercial vehicle company, Ashok Leyland.

Click here to download the PDF review (9 MB file), or read it in the panel below.

If you wish to submit such reviews of annual reports, I would be happy to share the same with other tribe members. Just prepare them in the same format I am doing (make your notes on the report itself, scan them, convert to PDF file, and email to me).

It will be a good practice for you on how to read and analyze annual reports, plus the tribe will benefit. 🙂

Let me know your thoughts and questions on this review in the Comments section of this post…and also share any suggestion(s) you may have to make future reviews better and easier for your understanding.

Annual Report Review: Blue Star

In continuation of this series on reviewing annual reports, here is my review of the FY15 report of India’s leading air-conditioning and commercial refrigeration company, Blue Star.

Click here to download the PDF review (10 MB file), or read it in the panel below.

Please note that this review is just to help you dig deeper, in case you are interested to read and understand more of the reviewed company. Don’t treat this as an end to your quest for learning more about businesses and industries, and how to analyze them.

In fact, this is just the beginning. 🙂

Annual Report Review: Indian Hotels

In continuation of this series on reviewing annual reports, here is my review of the FY15 report of India’s largest hotel company, Indian Hotels.

Click here to download the PDF review (11 MB file), or read it in the panel below.

In fact, this is just the beginning. 🙂

Let me know your thoughts on this review in the Comments section of this post…and also share any suggestion(s) you may have to make future reviews better and easier for your understanding.

Annual Report Review: Exide Industries

It’s annual report reading season…and a constant inflow of new reports is keeping me busy.

I have a habit of making hand-written notes on the annual reports I read (if they are soft copies, I print the important pages). This time, however, I thought of sharing these notes with you…just as an experiment. Maybe, this would nudge you closer to reading annual reports on your own, if you don’t read them.

Anyways, I start this review series with Exide Industries, India’s leading storage battery manufacturer.

5 More Reasons to Read Annual Reports

Here’s an old joke. A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together.

After a few minutes, the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park.

The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “This is where the light is.”

Behavioural scientists call this the “streetlight effect”, which is a type of observational bias where people only look for whatever they are searching by looking where it is easiest.

When it comes to investing, most people suffer from the streetlight effect and search for keys (stock ideas) where it looks the easiest (stock market and stock prices). But the reality is that the stock market is rarely the place where you can find the best ideas for long term investment.

Rather, the best ideas are found by looking at businesses, studying them, and identifying which ones are doing well, which ones may continue to do well, and which ones may be going downhill.

And how do you know that?

My Email Exchange with Prof. Sanjay Bakshi on Valuations

In the March 2015 issue of my premium newsletter Value Investing Almanack, I wrote on the topic of Valuations as the cover story.

My idea was to bring forth varied thoughts on valuing stocks and especially from the angle of drawing the line between paying up and overpaying for high-quality businesses.

I showed the draft of my note to Prof. Sanjay Bakshi, and he was kind enough as always to share his thoughts on how investors must look at valuations, especially when they are looking at expensive-looking, high P/E stocks in their portfolios.

What follows below is our email exchange on the subject. I am sharing it here so that a wider audience benefits from Prof. Bakshi’s thoughts on the important subject of valuations.

In the meanwhile, if you wish to read the complete March 2015 issue of Value Investing Almanack, and my detailed take on valuations and a lot of other ideas, please click here to subscribe.

Introducing: The DCF Calculator

First things first. I had a wonderful workshop in Pune last Sunday. And here are the amazing tribe members who attended it…

Safal Niveshak Value Investing Workshop - Pune 2015

My upcoming Workshops would be in Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai, and you will get an update on the same soon.

Anyways, let me now focus on today’s topic. Ever since I shared my stock analysis excel a couple of years back, I have received innumerable questions from people who’ve found it difficult to handle the excel. 🙂

If you have been facing a similar problem, don’t worry, because I’m working on a few simple online calculators – like the one on DCF or discounted cash flow method below – that can help you analyze the financials of businesses and also value them.

Now, before you praise me for my tech skills which I don’t have, let me share that this calculator has been developed by my good friend and tribe member Anshul Khare, who is also working with me on other such calculators. Thanks Anshul!

Before you work on the calculator below, read this post I did on how to value stocks using DCF to understand the basics of sensible DCF usage, and how to avoid its misuse.

How to Master Analyzing the Cash Flow Statement

A wise man once said, “If your outgo exceeds your inflow, then your upkeep will be your downfall.”

That says a lot about the importance of cash flow in a person’s life. In fact, if your cash flow is healthy, it will cover a lot of sins. 🙂

A company is no different. You will find businesses that generate a lot of cash flows, even when they may not be earning profits.

I have a friend who runs a company that did not make profit for five years in a row. But my friend never missed his yearly trip to the US, and he bought a high end car every two years. His employees were also paid well.

You may wonder, “But how he did it?”

The answer is – Great cash flow.

Intrinsic Value: A Big Deal?

Here is an email I received from a tribesman yesterday…

I agree that evaluating and buying great businesses at the correct price (i.e. prices below the intrinsic value) is of utmost importance.

However, while I think I am getting better in evaluating the growth of businesses, their durable moats and creating my own check list of investing, my biggest challenge is in calculating the range of the “intrinsic value”.

I am still not able to calculate the risk associated with the stock and that is prohibiting me from confidently buying a stock which I believe is a value buy.

May I request you to please share any pointers, books, frameworks which can help me estimate the risk and/or this intrinsic value?

I believe this – calculating intrinsic value – is one big issue most investors face, and thus I thought of replying to this email via a post.

Well, the concept of intrinsic value is indeed tricky.