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Visaka Industries – Fairly Priced for Long Term Prospects

TIP Guy 4 October 2010 analysis 31 Comments

Visaka Industries Limited (VISAKAIND) is a Hyderabad based company engaged in two businesses viz., Building Products and Textile Synthetic Yarn. Building products include cement asbestos, accessories, non-asbestos flat sheets – used in roofing material and interiors, V board panel made from cellulose fiber and inorganic silica binders. Textile Synthetic Yarn products include blends of polyester, viscose and related material sets – used in weaving of fabric. These yarn products are used in manufacture of shirting, suiting, fashion fabrics, upholstery and embroidery laces. Recently, Visaka has also entered in power generation, but it is not expected to have any impact on results for another few years.


Trend Analysis

The whole reason for any business to exist is to generate sales revenue and make more profits. At a minimum, the parameters listed below should have continuously increasing trends. All the data below is from 2001 onwards. Continue reading rest of this article…

Chasing and Paying for Future Expectations – Fallacy or Conundrum ?

TIP Guy 23 September 2010 opinion 10 Comments

NIFTY and SENSEX have been scaling heights in recent months – that is true only if you look back last 6 months, or  12 months, or 24 months.  But when you look back 2 years or 3 years, one would say, it is not a correct statement. In this context, the correct statement would be to say NIFTY and SENSEX are at same levels. You see how putting context or changing data set changes observations and conclusions. The point being, as an investor you have to learn how to “make an objective decision”. You have to learn how to “avoid making subjective decisions”. The current state of equity markets and economy provides a very good example of how to we make subjective decisions.


In last month or so, I have had an opportunity to interact with few folks on email. Many of these folks very interested to know whether it is time to sell any stocks in my portfolio e.g. ONGC, Reliance Capital, HDFC Bank, ABB, etc. Many of them wanted to check if it is time to book some profits. And few folks made a comment that Reliance Capital, NTPC, and ABCIL are not fundamentally strong for buy and hold portfolio. Continue reading rest of this article…

Tata Investment Corporation: Can it be Treated like Mutual Fund?

TIP Guy 28 August 2010 Reader QnAs, stocks 5 Comments

Today, I am responding to generic questions about treating a holding companies like a mutual fund scheme. The point here is, not to say, my approach is the only right way. Right or wrong depends upon the context. It depends upon your objective. So without much ado, here I go….


……holding company having ‘Strategic stake Vs Financial Stake’ and treating(valuing) each of them differently simply because strategic stake may never get sold/realized. Do you factor in this difference in to your fair value calculation ? If yes, how ? The how part of the question is because as per my knowledge there is no such breakup provided in the AR Continue reading rest of this article…

Free Giveaway: MPROFIT Portfolio Management Solution

TIP Guy 27 August 2010 blogging, opinion 2 Comments

Few months back I wrote, post about MPROFIT, a product for personalized portfolio management which is desktop based. In simple terms, this is solution for retail investors to manage/track their transactions across many different types of asset class. It simplifies many of the mundane tasks of portfolio tracking. Some of the highlights are:

  • Manage an unlimited number of individual and group portfolios:  This is good for all do-it-yourself investors. Almost all of us tend to manage different types of assets/buckets/type of portfolio.
  • Manage assets like Stocks, MFs, ETFs, ULIPs, Insurance Policies, Private Equity, FDs, Bonds, PPF, Gold, Silver, Property, Art and many more…
  • Online update of BSE stock prices, Mutual Fund NAVs and ETFs – I like this one
  • Track income received from investments – I love this one
  • Annualised Returns (XIRR) report – My favorite feature because I believe this has much more relevance in personal investing. CAGRs are nothing but mathematical jugglery.
  • Online update for newly listed stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and company name changes
  • All your financial data is saved locally on your computer – My preferred choice, I like my personal financial stuff in my own computer, especially in Indian context.


In addition, I like that team at MPROFIT listens to its customers. It keeps adding features that customers are looking for and makes more sense to individuals like us. The most recent update (v5.0) has added capability with different methods of “data importing”. Different ways to import data are: Continue reading rest of this article…

Holding companies Can Be Good Long Term Investments

TIP Guy 18 August 2010 commentary, stocks 18 Comments

In writing this post, I am assuming that readers understand what holding companies mean. If not, then you may read a simple primer on holding companies (link to another blog). I do not have any particular bias against or for holding companies. As I have said on many in past, investing should be based on your objectives. These objectives should take into consideration your risk profile and time horizon. This blog is about long term sustainable wealth creation. Does holding companies fit into it? How?


I try to keep things simple and focused. Style and panacea does not give you sustainable returns. Your sustainable returns comes from substance behind those stocks. All holding companies are not created equal, and hence all cannot be  grouped together as good or bad. As an individual investor, you need to separate holding companies that have substance and fits your portfolio objectives. Continue reading rest of this article…

Narrowing Search Space – Looking for Needle in a Haystack

TIP Guy 11 August 2010 education, process 14 Comments

What is common between “searching for needle in a haystack” and “going fishing”? The common thing is you are trying to get one small thing (needle or fish) in a sea of unknowns. That’s where the commonality ends. The approach one takes is different in both cases. In case of fishing, you place your hook in the water and wait for fish to get trapped. Yeah, you may try to fish in location known to be breeding ground. But in the end, fundamentally, you have to wait for the fish to get trapped. In case of searching for needle, you are making a proactive effort to clean the haystack knowing there is at least one needle somewhere in there. A dumb person will try to dive in, but a smart person, will carefully remove small blocks of haystack to reduce search space. You cannot do that with water. Can you reduce water to increase your probability of catching your fish? Probably not.


It is in this context, I believe searching for a good company is like searching for a needle in a Haystack. If you make your search space smaller and smaller, you are likely to find that needle. The only question that remains is how you make your search space smaller? There are many different approaches to narrow down your search space. Continue reading rest of this article…

Investment Buckets – An Update

TIP Guy 6 August 2010 index, strategy 4 Comments

Contrary to general belief, the process of studying and learning does not end when you graduate out of college. It is a continuous process. If you stop learning, you will fail to adapt to the changing environment. You know what happens to stagnant pool of water? Same way, in true sense, long term portfolio or building a long term process, you need to adapt. As you learn more, you need to make changes. During the early phase of TIPBlog, I presented different investment buckets that I use or planned to use.


To refresh, these buckets are not asset allocation. How can that be? A true asset allocation should not have co-relation or may have very low co-relation. The ones that I show on this post, are all co-related and hence, not asset allocation. All are equities! When we talk about asset allocation, what it means is savings, FDs, bonds, equities, gold, etc. They are investment vehicles that are likely to provide true asset allocation benefits. Out of all these, I only focus on writing about equities on TIPBlog. Continue reading rest of this article…

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