Enough liquidity in the system, but credit flow weak – Edelweiss

Update on Indian equity market:
Indian markets were muted today with Nifty closing the day 4 points higher at 11,935. Within the index, the gainers were led by IT biggies like HCLTECH (+4.1%), INFY (+2.5%) and KOTAKBANK (+2.2%) whereas CIPLA (-3.6%), TITAN (-2.6%) and ADANIPORTS (-2.5%) were the laggards. Among the sectoral indices, only IT (+1.3%) and METAL (+0.4%) closed in green whereas PHARMA (-1.8%), PSU BANK (-1.5%), and PVT BANK (-0.9%) led the laggards.
Excerpts of an interview with Mr. Rashesh Shah, CEO, Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd. (Edelweiss) published on CNBC-TV18 dated 12th October 2020:
50% of the loan book was under moratorium when it was announced by the Government. The same number has been under 20% by the end of September. 80% of customers are paying regularly. He said that the company has exposure to only semi-formal and formal sectors. The current Non-Performing Assets (NPA) is at 2-3%.
Commenting on the impact of the pandemic on the company’s books, he said that 2% should be the impact of credit cost purely because of COVID-19. He said that growth and profitability are the two challenges for the Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFC) sector.
Liquidity in the system has improved in the last four-five months through various measures like TLTRO, partial credit guarantee schemes taken by the RBI. He said that liquidity is ample but the market is currently lacking the credit flow.
The bond market needs to get stabilized, long term credit flow needs to get started again for risk-taking, and the investment cycle to start again. The bond markets are currently dislocated and not yet back to 60-70% of the pre-ILFS levels.
The company has recently raised Rs 20,000 mn through the stake sale in the wealth management business, which is more than 5% of the company’s book size.
He said that the capital adequacy ratio for the housing finance business is at 25%, retail NBFC at 28%, and ECL finance at 21%.
Consensus Estimate: (Source: market screener & investing.com websites)
The closing price of Edelweiss was ₹ 60/- as of 13-Oct-2020. It traded at 0.9x/ 0.8x/ 0.8x the consensus Book Value estimate of ₹ 66/ 70/ 77 for FY21E/ FY22E/ FY23E respectively.
The consensus target price of ₹ 87/- implies a P/BV multiple of 1.1x on FY23E BV of ₹ 77.
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