In 2-3 years, Bharat Forge will not look like a forging company.
Update on Indian Equity Market:
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In 2-3 years, Bharat Forge will not look like a forging company.
Excerpts of an interview with Mr Baba Kalyani, Chairman and MD, Bharat Forge. The interview was published in Mint dated 15th October 2019.
- There is some order coming back into the auto industry with retail demand beginning to increase and production being curtailed to get the inventory down. It will take a little while before the order is restored completely and growth will come after that. It will take a couple of months for the inventory to get to a proper level.
- The largest slowdown is in domestic medium and heavy market with month on month declines of 40-50%. The industry has never seen this kind of slowdown.
- Among the international markets, North America and Europe are going at reasonable levels. There is some pick up happening in Brazil. The problem is in the Indian vehicle market which needs to get sorted out.
- Bharat Forge is doing reasonably well in the railways’ segment. It is a niche market that is not high in volume. Bharat Forge has 4 customers which are the major OEMs. Along with crankshafts, the company is starting to move towards turbochargers, connecting rods. They are trying to enlarge the business by enlarging the product mix.
- In the aerospace segment, Bharat forge has consciously decided to move to high-value niche products. The company manufactures critical components such as turbine blades, shafts, and landing gears. They are not into the high volume structure side of the business as it has too many participants and the margins are not great.
- It takes a long time to become a supplier in the critical components such as the turbine blades or rotating shafts. These are very critical and safety components that cannot be failing. Bharat Forge has been successful in becoming a supplier of these components and the management hopes to start seeing better volumes.
- The current downturn, although painful, is helping the company to reshape and restructure itself from a product, process, and technology point of view.
- In the next 2-3 years, Bharat Forge will not be seen as a forging company. It will become a technology company. The company is doing a lot of things in the electric vehicle space and other technology spaces. They have developed a promising new technology space using their nanotechnology expertise of converting waste to wealth.
Consensus Estimate (Source: market screener website)
- The stock price was ₹ 428/- as of close of 16-10-19 and traded at 20x/ 18x/ 16x the consensus EPS for FY20E / 21E / 22E EPS of ₹ 21.4 /23.5 /26.5 respectively.
- Consensus target price of ₹ 444/- implies a PE multiple of 17x on FY22E EPS of ₹ 26.5/-.