Performance of stock ideas from the IAS Summit Online 20-20 Edition (Dec 21, 2025), as of today:
14 winners, 6 losers (20 picks)
Average return: +28.1% | Median: +5.7%
An equally weighted portfolio would have outperformed the Nifty 500 by 30% in last 6 months.
Drop your portfolio or watchlist, and I'll analyze it with something I have been experimenting with.
You'll get:
I am sharing a link to one of my previous portfolio reviews so you can see the level of detail.
My watchlist review - https://compoundingai.in/share/W32zWgsuGbM5RDhY_2Kpgg
India just had its driest June in over a century and this means expensive protein.
( Source - Link is here if anyone wants the full thing )
MP and Maharashtra produce 85% of India's soybeans. Both got hit hardest, Maharashtra was down 85% rainfall, MP down 58%. Soybean is completely rain-fed, no irrigation backup. By mid-June, soybean acreage had already collapsed 48% year-on-year. And this is on top of last year's crop already being down 16-17%.
Soybean meal was ₹39/kg at the start of this year. It's ₹63/kg now. The all-time peak was ₹90/kg in 2021 when things got bad enough that the government had to emergency import 1.2 million tonnes. We're 30-40% below that with a worse supply situation than 2021.
Soy chunks, tofu, anything soy-based gets hit directly. But also indirectly - soybean meal is what goes into poultry feed, shrimp feed, livestock feed. So eggs, chicken, farmed fish all follow.
The sowing window closes in about two weeks. If the monsoon doesn't show up in MP and Maharashtra by then, this acreage deficit gets locked in for the season. That's when it gets interesting.
India just had its driest June in over a century and this means expensive protein.
( Souce - Link is here if anyone wants the full thing )
MP and Maharashtra produce 85% of India's soybeans. Both got hit hardest, Maharashtra was down 85% rainfall, MP down 58%. Soybean is completely rain-fed, no irrigation backup. By mid-June, soybean acreage had already collapsed 48% year-on-year. And this is on top of last year's crop already being down 16-17%.
Soybean meal was ₹39/kg at the start of this year. It's ₹63/kg now. The all-time peak was ₹90/kg in 2021 when things got bad enough that the government had to emergency import 1.2 million tonnes. We're 30-40% below that with a worse supply situation than 2021.
Soy chunks, tofu, anything soy-based gets hit directly. But also indirectly - soybean meal is what goes into poultry feed, shrimp feed, livestock feed. So eggs, chicken, farmed fish all follow.
The sowing window closes in about two weeks. If the monsoon doesn't show up in MP and Maharashtra by then, this acreage deficit gets locked in for the season. That's when it gets interesting.
India just had its driest June in over a century and this means expensive protein.
( I did a deep dive on this - covering the supply chain, affected listed companies & ones benefit. Link is here if anyone wants the full thing )
MP and Maharashtra produce 85% of India's soybeans. Both got hit hardest, Maharashtra was down 85% rainfall, MP down 58%. Soybean is completely rain-fed, no irrigation backup. By mid-June, soybean acreage had already collapsed 48% year-on-year. And this is on top of last year's crop already being down 16-17%.
Soybean meal was ₹39/kg at the start of this year. It's ₹63/kg now. The all-time peak was ₹90/kg in 2021 when things got bad enough that the government had to emergency import 1.2 million tonnes. We're 30-40% below that with a worse supply situation than 2021.
Soy chunks, tofu, anything soy-based gets hit directly. But also indirectly - soybean meal is what goes into poultry feed, shrimp feed, livestock feed. So eggs, chicken, farmed fish all follow.
The sowing window closes in about two weeks. If the monsoon doesn't show up in MP and Maharashtra by then, this acreage deficit gets locked in for the season. That's when it gets interesting.
Creative Newtech Ltd is up over 16% today on news of a ₹3,195 crore BharatNet Phase III order from BSNL. While the market is pricing this as a clean revenue multiplier, the operational and financial realities under the hood show a distinct pattern of structural risks.
Here is the breakdown of the situation:
Creative Newtech's core business is distributing IT and lifestyle brands. This contract requires them to design, build, and maintain a telecom network in rural Odisha over 3 years. This is a capital-intensive infrastructure play, which is entirely separate from consumer tech distribution.
The order value is more than 3x the company's entire market cap of ~₹950 crore. Executing a project of this scale typically requires heavy project-based debt and expanded working capital limits, which alters a company's financial profile long before revenue is fully recognized.
BharatNet Phase III contracts operate on milestone-based payments, meaning vendors must fund equipment and deployment upfront. Historically, BSNL-linked projects have seen heavily stretched working capital cycles due to milestone dependencies and certification delays:
Across the sector, similar BharatNet order announcements initially triggered major stock rallies, followed by as much as 35% corrections as the actual cash flow strain of executing the orders began to show on balance sheets.
Note : This is not an investment advise. Please DYOR.
Disclosure up front: I am long, entry around ₹450, now near ₹1550, so I am not neutral. I first came across the name in a CompoundingAI article and went down the filings rabbit hole. This is a study, not a tip.
I have seen a lot of people on social media have started talking about Venus Remedies. Interesting because I came across this 8 months back.
Eight years ago this was effectively a distressed credit: revenue stuck around ₹370 to ₹400 crore, three straight years of losses, roughly ₹70 crore of secured debt, lenders at recovery tribunals. FY21 was the repair year, with debt settled with SBI, EXIM and HDFC, waivers above ₹45 crore, and the "Elores" brand sold for around ₹52 crore.
The most interesting part is they have close to 130+ granted patents. A ratio of 0.1 patent/ employee. I rarely see any other company with that high patents.
Then look at FY26 (results out 26 May):
- Revenue ₹769.6 crore, up 17.9%, with Q4 up 31.2%.
- EBITDA margin 20.77%, up 783 bps YoY, on operating leverage (expenses grew 6.8% against revenue up 17.9%).
- PAT ₹102.78 crore, up 126.8% (about 95% after normalising last year's exceptional item).
- Debt-free, ROCE around 20%, free cash flow ₹118 crore, ₹10 per share dividend.
The catch, where I stay skeptical:
- Part of the margin jump is an inventory build (up 28.7% YoY) that capitalises cost and added roughly 2 points to EBITDA margin. Turnover slowed.
- R&D fell to 2.36% of sales from 2.86%. Operating leverage today, thinner pipeline tomorrow.
So the balance-sheet repair is real and the FY26 is strong. They have a drug approval pending in the USA- VRP-034. If it get clears in the next 2-3 years, I see no reason why it can't turn into a mid-cap with 10x increase in market cap.
Not a buy or sell call. Education only.
Source : CompoundingAI
I just saw this. Take a look at the video. It is a massive, coordinated bot farm pumping Aditya Birla Capital.
Every single reply is posted within minutes of each other from accounts with string-of-number handles. They all use the exact same copy paste corporate garbage like "amazing expertise" and "seamless support" with a heart emoji. There is zero real engagement. It is just a wall of manufactured sentiment designed to artificially force a trend and probably drown out actual customer complaints.
SEBI has been cracking down hard on finfluencers lately for market manipulation and unregistered financial advice. That makes sense. But how is this coordinated fake engagement by a major financial entity any different?
You cannot tell me this does not manipulate retail perception just as much as a random YouTuber pushing a penny stock. If a brand pays an agency to deploy thousands of fake accounts to create the illusion of massive public trust, that is textbook manipulation.
Inputs from this source - Article
Quick context - gold imports hit an all-time high in FY26 at $71.98 billion. PM made an appeal in Hyderabad on Sunday and Vadodara yesterday asking Indians to not buy gold for a year. Jewellery stocks sold off immediately after that and yet again today.
This experiment already ran, just more severely in the last 2 years.
Gold prices went up 60% last year. Steepest price shock in two decades. Indian demand fell less than 5%. Kalyan Jewellers grew revenue 64%. Titan 46%. At Akshaya Tritiya, Thangamayil actually sold more volume despite prices being up 59%.
If a 60% price rise couldn't stop people from buying, I'm not sure a speech will.
This isn't even the first time someone tried this. Morarji Desai did this in 1962 except with actual criminal penalties. You couldn't legally hold gold bars or coins. The government ran bond schemes with 6.5% interest to get people to hand over their gold voluntarily.
Total collected: 30.7 tonnes. Against annual consumption of 800-900 tonnes at the time. Less than one month of demand. The whole act was repealed in 1990 because it simply didn't work.
I find it hard to see how a Sunday speech clears that bar. A commenter on put something well that I've been thinking about
Gold is a hedge against inflation, falling rupee, falling stocks, and economic distress. Which of those is India NOT heading into right now?
That framing stuck with me. The same macro stress that pushed the PM to make this appeal - oil shock, rupee weakness, CAD blowing out is the exact environment where people rationally buy more gold, not less. You're asking households to voluntarily give up their best available hedge at the moment they need it most. I don't think that's a bet worth making.
Also, the forex math is also less impressive than it looks. Of 721 tonnes imported, 150 tonnes gets re-exported as finished jewellery, 30 tonnes backs ETFs, 10 tonnes is industrial. The actual domestically consumed pool the appeal can target is around 530 tonnes.
A 4% demand cut on that, at current gold prices, saves about $2.6 billion net after accounting for demand that simply routes to grey market channels instead.
India's current account deficit is forecast at $37 billion.
A $20 per barrel move in crude swings $25 billion.
What I think actually plays out is that the Indian households already hold an estimated 25,000 tonnes of gold. The appeal says nothing about that stockpile. In a high price, tight credit environment, I think households don't stop using gold, they start pledging it instead.
Muthoot Finance gold loan book grew 50% this year. Manappuram grew 99% in one quarter. At the same time RBI tightened personal loans and credit cards, pushing more borrowers toward gold-backed credit.
My read: jewellery stocks recover within a couple of wedding seasons. Gold loan NBFCs are in a structural upcycle that has nothing to do with this appeal.
Inputs from this source - Article
Quick context - gold imports hit an all-time high in FY26 at $71.98 billion. PM made an appeal in Hyderabad on Sunday and Vadodara yesterday asking Indians to not buy gold for a year. Jewellery stocks sold off immediately after that and yet again today.
This experiment already ran, just more severely in the last 2 years.
Gold prices went up 60% last year. Steepest price shock in two decades. Indian demand fell less than 5%. Kalyan Jewellers grew revenue 64%. Titan 46%. At Akshaya Tritiya, Thangamayil actually sold more volume despite prices being up 59%.
If a 60% price rise couldn't stop people from buying, I'm not sure a speech will.
This isn't even the first time someone tried this. Morarji Desai did this in 1962 except with actual criminal penalties. You couldn't legally hold gold bars or coins. The government ran bond schemes with 6.5% interest to get people to hand over their gold voluntarily.
Total collected: 30.7 tonnes. Against annual consumption of 800-900 tonnes at the time. Less than one month of demand. The whole act was repealed in 1990 because it simply didn't work.
I find it hard to see how a Sunday speech clears that bar. A commenter on put something well that I've been thinking about
Gold is a hedge against inflation, falling rupee, falling stocks, and economic distress. Which of those is India NOT heading into right now?
That framing stuck with me. The same macro stress that pushed the PM to make this appeal - oil shock, rupee weakness, CAD blowing out is the exact environment where people rationally buy more gold, not less. You're asking households to voluntarily give up their best available hedge at the moment they need it most. I don't think that's a bet worth making.
Also, the forex math is also less impressive than it looks. Of 721 tonnes imported, 150 tonnes gets re-exported as finished jewellery, 30 tonnes backs ETFs, 10 tonnes is industrial. The actual domestically consumed pool the appeal can target is around 530 tonnes.
A 4% demand cut on that, at current gold prices, saves about $2.6 billion net after accounting for demand that simply routes to grey market channels instead.
India's current account deficit is forecast at $37 billion.
A $20 per barrel move in crude swings $25 billion.
What I think actually plays out is that the Indian households already hold an estimated 25,000 tonnes of gold. The appeal says nothing about that stockpile. In a high price, tight credit environment, I think households don't stop using gold, they start pledging it instead.
Muthoot Finance gold loan book grew 50% this year. Manappuram grew 99% in one quarter. At the same time RBI tightened personal loans and credit cards, pushing more borrowers toward gold-backed credit.
My read: jewellery stocks recover within a couple of wedding seasons. Gold loan NBFCs are in a structural upcycle that has nothing to do with this appeal.
There was a bloodbath today in market but these 50 names swam against the tide.
Rain Industries led the day at +13.90%. Full breakdown by sector
#1 · Rain Industries +13.90%
Big Movers (>8%)
Healthcare & Pharma
Capex & Industrials
Chemicals & Specialty
Tech & Telecom
BFSI
Consumer & Others
Note : This is not an investment advise. Just sharing info
Source : CompoundingAI
I have gone through the Q4 FY25 and Q3 FY26 concall transcripts and the Q4 FY26 numbers. Management's most generous revised timeline is Q3 FY27 (June quarter of next calendar year, as Bothra said on the Q3 FY26 call). Let's just check if even that is realistic.
Where Instamart ended Q4 FY26 - Quarterly loss: ₹736 Cr. Sequential improvement from Q3 FY26 to Q4 FY26: ~₹55 Cr.
Q3 FY27 is two quarters away. At ₹55 Cr improvement per quarter, Instamart gets to roughly ₹626 Cr of losses by Q3 FY27. That's not even close to breakeven.
To hit Q3 FY27 breakeven, the sequential improvement needs to more than 6x from here. Every single quarter between now and then.
There could be step-change improvements from dark store maturation, higher order density, reduced discounting. Management clearly believes that. But it needs to be said clearly: the current run-rate of improvement does not get you there. Something has to change materially in the next two quarters, not gradually.
On the Q3 FY26 call Bothra's exact words were: "we are seeking flexibility over two more quarters, it could happen in December, it could happen in the June quarter of the next calendar year."
Even the flexible version of the guidance requires a significant acceleration from current trajectory. The numbers as they stand don't support the optimistic end of that range, let alone the original Q1 FY27 target.
Source : CompoundingAI
Dabur's PAT up 7.2%, guidance which is technically true but there's something more.
Their "Other Income" for FY26 had ₹186 cr of non-recurring gains, basically mark-to-market and sale gains on their massive cash pile. Strip that out post-tax and normalised PAT grew 4.6%.
Management had guided that PAT growth would beat EBITDA growth. EBITDA grew 5.9%. Normalised PAT grew 4.6%. So on the metric they themselves set, they missed, they just don't highlight it because the reported number looks fine.
Not saying it's fraud or anything but if you're tracking operating leverage, you want the 4.6% number, not the 7.2%.
That said, the actual business is decent
Consumer Care (80% of revenue) genuinely had a good quarter. Revenue +8.4%, EBIT margins up 132 bps to 19.9%. Hair oils market share apparently hit all-time highs in Q3. Rural demand holding up. The standalone India business grew PAT 18% YoY in Q4 which is solid.
Raw material costs also helped, materials as % of revenue went from 47.4% to 45.2% YoY.
Juices and beverages had a rough year. Revenue down 4.1% for the full year, EBIT down 10.5%. Margins compressed. It's only ~15% of revenue but it's been a consistent drag and I haven't heard a convincing turnaround story yet.
Cash flow is good with CFO ₹2,579 cr, up 30% YoY. FCF ₹2,158 cr. CFO/PAT at 1.38x. Net cash ₹3,621 cr. They paid ₹1,419 cr in dividends and barely dented the balance sheet. Whatever you think of the P&L quality, the cash generation is real.
TL;DR
Solid company, clean balance sheet, core business working. Just don't let the 7.2% PAT headline do more work than it should. The underlying number is 4.6% and that's actually below their own EBITDA growth which is the opposite of what they promised.
Source : CompoundingAI
Been posting here for a few weeks as text posts and thought why not try a video. It's rough, I know. Anyway here's what I cover-
The 103% PAT number everyone is running with is mostly noise. Like ₹1,600 crore of that is just an accounting adjustment from the KTM deal, not actual business performance. Once you strip that out real growth is around 22%. Still good, just not "profits doubled" good.
The actual business is doing well though. 32% revenue growth, zero debt, exports finally hitting the 2 lakh a month target they'd been promising. Domestic volumes up 24% which matters because there were genuine concerns about market share erosion not too long ago.
The part I keep thinking about is their lending arm BACL. Two years old. Loan book doubled in one year. Profits went 11x. They're basically becoming a financier for their own customers and the numbers are insane for something this new. Might do a separate post on this.
Two things worth watching - auditors gave a qualified opinion on consolidated numbers because KTM reports semi-annually so there's literally no way to verify the quarterly split. Also KTM brings ₹22,000 crore of debt onto the group balance sheet. Standalone Bajaj is still debt free but consolidated is a different story now.
Anyway first video ever, so Yeah!
BHAGYANGR: Delivered a major beat with 46.3% revenue growth (vs 35-40% guidance), a 258% PAT surge, and strongly positive CFO of ₹59 Cr ahead of the June 9th copper demerger.
NAVINFLUOR: Exceptional performance with 992 bps margin expansion (beating 28-30% guidance) and significant deleveraging as Debt/Equity improved to 0.31x.
ETERNAL: Revenue nearly tripled (+196.4%) driven by Quick Commerce turning profitable (₹265 Cr profit vs ₹82 Cr loss) and growing 625.7% YoY.
TIPSMUSIC: Exceptional Q4 with 92.9% PAT growth, beating 20% guidance by 10 points while content acquisition costs were kept to 10.2% vs the 18% guided limit.
ACUTAAS: Major guidance beat with 33% revenue growth and 35.87% EBITDA margin (vs 28-30% range), supported by a 155% surge in CWIP for capacity expansion.
CGCL: PAT of ₹9,491.52 Mn exceeded guidance by 11.7%, while ROE hit 16.49%, achieving the FY28 target two years ahead of schedule.
SMARTWORKS: Reported first full year of profitability with 440 bps margin expansion and crossed the 10 million sq ft operational portfolio milestone.
PHOENIXLTD: Major outperformance with EBITDA margins at 60.8% (beating 56-57% guidance) and the residential segment surging 122.3% YoY.
EQUITASBNK: PAT grew 405% YoY as provisions declined 52%, with the bank now meeting all universal bank license criteria (GNPA 2.60%, NNPA 0.72%).
STLTECH: Strategic pivot confirmed as Enterprise/Data Center revenue mix reached 36% (beating 30% target) and the company turned PAT positive at ₹59 Cr.
TMB: Beat guidance across advances (20.78% vs 16%) and business growth (17.57% vs 14%) while driving GNPA to a multi-year low of 0.73%.
AURUM: Achieved ₹505.4 Cr annualized ARR target and effectively became debt-free (91% debt reduction) with a 1740 bps EBITDA margin expansion.
VEDL: FY26 EBITDA beat management guidance by 12%, while Aluminum margins expanded 1600 bps and the Power segment saw a 365% EBITDA surge.
CHENNPETRO: Transformational FY26 with PAT growing 1349% as GRM more than doubled to $9.28/bbl and throughput reached 111.5% capacity utilization.
CHOICEIN: PAT growth of 39.1% exceeded 25-30% guidance while EBITDA margins beat the guided range by 620 bps, led by the Broking segment's 110% growth.
ATUL: Strong turnaround in Life Science Chemicals (margins expanded 921 bps) and robust free cash flow of ₹847.90 Cr with a virtually debt-free balance sheet.
INFOBEAN: Major revenue beat (30.1% growth vs mid-teen guidance) with PAT more than doubling and a strong 1.22x cash conversion ratio.
CEATLTD: Revenue and PAT (+47.7%) beat double-digit guidance while maintaining conservative leverage (0.60x D/E) and increasing the dividend by 350%.
FEDFINA: Beaten guidance on AUM growth (22.9% vs 12-15%) and credit costs (0.89%), while PAT grew 52.6% YoY.
SEJALLTD: Confirmed turnaround with Glasstech reaching EBITDA break-even and balance sheet deleveraging from 4.16x to 0.99x D/E via a ₹94 Cr equity raise.
Source : CompoundingAI
Note : This is not an investment advise.
BHAGYANGR: Delivered a major beat with 46.3% revenue growth (vs 35-40% guidance), a 258% PAT surge, and strongly positive CFO of ₹59 Cr ahead of the June 9th copper demerger.
NAVINFLUOR: Exceptional performance with 992 bps margin expansion (beating 28-30% guidance) and significant deleveraging as Debt/Equity improved to 0.31x.
ETERNAL: Revenue nearly tripled (+196.4%) driven by Quick Commerce turning profitable (₹265 Cr profit vs ₹82 Cr loss) and growing 625.7% YoY.
TIPSMUSIC: Exceptional Q4 with 92.9% PAT growth, beating 20% guidance by 10 points while content acquisition costs were kept to 10.2% vs the 18% guided limit.
ACUTAAS: Major guidance beat with 33% revenue growth and 35.87% EBITDA margin (vs 28-30% range), supported by a 155% surge in CWIP for capacity expansion.
CGCL: PAT of ₹9,491.52 Mn exceeded guidance by 11.7%, while ROE hit 16.49%, achieving the FY28 target two years ahead of schedule.
SMARTWORKS: Reported first full year of profitability with 440 bps margin expansion and crossed the 10 million sq ft operational portfolio milestone.
PHOENIXLTD: Major outperformance with EBITDA margins at 60.8% (beating 56-57% guidance) and the residential segment surging 122.3% YoY.
EQUITASBNK: PAT grew 405% YoY as provisions declined 52%, with the bank now meeting all universal bank license criteria (GNPA 2.60%, NNPA 0.72%).
STLTECH: Strategic pivot confirmed as Enterprise/Data Center revenue mix reached 36% (beating 30% target) and the company turned PAT positive at ₹59 Cr.
TMB: Beat guidance across advances (20.78% vs 16%) and business growth (17.57% vs 14%) while driving GNPA to a multi-year low of 0.73%.
AURUM: Achieved ₹505.4 Cr annualized ARR target and effectively became debt-free (91% debt reduction) with a 1740 bps EBITDA margin expansion.
VEDL: FY26 EBITDA beat management guidance by 12%, while Aluminum margins expanded 1600 bps and the Power segment saw a 365% EBITDA surge.
CHENNPETRO: Transformational FY26 with PAT growing 1349% as GRM more than doubled to $9.28/bbl and throughput reached 111.5% capacity utilization.
CHOICEIN: PAT growth of 39.1% exceeded 25-30% guidance while EBITDA margins beat the guided range by 620 bps, led by the Broking segment's 110% growth.
ATUL: Strong turnaround in Life Science Chemicals (margins expanded 921 bps) and robust free cash flow of ₹847.90 Cr with a virtually debt-free balance sheet.
INFOBEAN: Major revenue beat (30.1% growth vs mid-teen guidance) with PAT more than doubling and a strong 1.22x cash conversion ratio.
CEATLTD: Revenue and PAT (+47.7%) beat double-digit guidance while maintaining conservative leverage (0.60x D/E) and increasing the dividend by 350%.
FEDFINA: Beaten guidance on AUM growth (22.9% vs 12-15%) and credit costs (0.89%), while PAT grew 52.6% YoY.
SEJALLTD: Confirmed turnaround with Glasstech reaching EBITDA break-even and balance sheet deleveraging from 4.16x to 0.99x D/E via a ₹94 Cr equity raise.
Source : CompoundingAI
Note : This is not an investment advise.
The multiplier table GitHub quietly updated last week is the first visible crack in a subsidy model that was never sustainable.
Quick context for anyone unfamiliar: Copilot plans give you a monthly pool of "premium requests." Each model has a multiplier that determines how fast you drain it. Until recently, Opus 4.6 had a 3x multiplier. It's now 27x. Sonnet 4.6 went from 1x to 9x.
But the multiplier table is just the symptom. The actual disease is that the AI companies have been eating the difference between what compute costs and what you pay.
Anthropic is genuinely compute-constrained right now. Claude Code, agentic workflows, long-context sessions, these eat 10-100x more tokens per user than a simple chat completion. The infrastructure to serve that demand takes 18-24 months to build. Meanwhile, week-over-week compute costs for GitHub Copilot nearly doubled since January. Microsoft and Anthropic have been absorbing that gap. They're done absorbing it.
The 27x multiplier is closer to honest pricing.
Millions of employees have Copilot provisioned as a corporate benefit by IT departments that have zero visibility into model-level consumption. No quota dashboard or model governance. Those employees have been running Opus on everything, code review, boilerplate, one-line completions because why wouldn't you use the best model?
On June 1, GitHub moves to full usage-based billing, the multiplier hike is just the warning shot, what comes next is actual dollar charges hitting corporate cards, traced back to individual usage patterns that nobody thought to govern.
Some engineering manager is going to have a very bad Tuesday in early June explaining to finance why the AI budget is 15x over forecast.
Every major provider is running the same playbook right now. OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor - the flat-rate era is being unwound in real time. The pricing structures being put in place now are designed to make heavy agentic usage reflect its true cost. If your team's workflow depends on treating frontier model access as essentially unlimited, that assumption has an expiration date and it's soon.
The free lunch is over. Adjust your defaults before June 1!
I dug into the results of Ultratech Cement for Q4 FY26: operating PBIDT per tonne came in at ₹1,253 in Q4. That's up 11% YoY. And up from ₹1,051 just last quarter.
For context, this is the number that tells you whether the cement business itself is getting better, independent of all the M&A noise, tax rate changes, exceptional items, India Cements integration accounting etc.
The reason it's moving is power and fuel. UltraTech's power & fuel costs grew only 3.7% YoY this quarter despite volumes growing double digits. Green power mix hit 43% of total consumption, up from 34% a year ago. Captive solar and wind doesn't fluctuate with coal prices. As that mix keeps rising toward their 60% target, the cost base gets structurally more stable.
The MD had said on the Q3 call - "EBITDA per tonne will increase over the next 15 months, definitely, without a doubt.", he knew what he was talking about.
Anyway. FCF of ₹5,638 Cr this year. Net debt/EBITDA at 0.94x and falling. Heavy capex cycle winding down and the special dividend is management basically telling you they can see what's coming.
The one thing I'm watching: South India realization pressure is real and visible in India Cements' own results. If that bleeds into the blended PBIDT/tonne number in FY27, that's the risk.
Not SEBI registered. Not advice. Do your own research.
Source : CompoundingAI
Just looking at the headline numbers, Varun Beverages had a really solid start to the year. Revenue is up 18.3% (₹6,721 Cr) and PAT is up 20.1% (₹872 Cr). PAT growing faster than revenue means the basic operating leverage test is passing.
But I was digging through the segment breakdowns and the underlying India vs. International split is where the actual story is happening right now.
The Growth Split:
Domestic (Standalone): Grew 11.1% YoY. This is a solid double-digit recovery from a monsoon-disrupted CY25 and right in line with their guidance.
International (Subsidiaries): Grew a massive 36.5% YoY (roughly 3x the domestic growth). International business now makes up 33% of the entire group's revenue.
But the catch is it only translates to roughly ~10% of the group's PBT.
They closed the Twizza acquisition in South Africa on March 18 for ~₹1,140 Cr. It was only consolidated for 13 days in Q1, so we'll see the full revenue impact starting in Q2. Crickley Dairy (also SA) is expected to close by September to expand into value-added dairy.
Depreciation shot up 30.9% YoY due to new plants commissioned in India and international brownfield expansions. Despite taking that massive D&A hit, operating leverage absorbed it, and EBITDA margins still expanded by 45 bps.
Looking Ahead, Q1 (Jan-Mar) is just the warm-up quarter leading into summer. Q2 (Apr-Jun) is the make-or-break quarter for VBL, it's when India drinks the most. The full-year guidance of double-digit volume growth looks very achievable from here, but it all hinges on Q2 execution and the summer heat(which is at peak this year!)
Note: This is just a numbers breakdown, not investment advice. Do your own due diligence.
Source : CompoundingAI
While doing my daily research on CompoundingAI, I came across this interesting observation on BEL.
BEL took a ₹200Cr+ revenue hit in Q1 FY26 directly due to the Israel-Iran conflict.
Straight from the CMD on the earnings call:
>"We were expecting around INR200 plus crores further execution of the order, but last minute because of geopolitical situation, especially in Israel-Iran conflict, that affected our minimum INR200 plus crores of the revenue." — Manoj Jain, CMD, Bharat Electronics Limited
BEL doesn't just sell to India. It has deep ties with Israel:
So the same conflict that hurt Q1 revenue is now accelerating India's emergency procurement pipeline and BEL is already receiving those orders. The CMD confirmed they've received emergency orders including an LLLR radar, with more expected.
The numbers:
The paradox is the thesis.
Disc: Not SEBI registered. Do your own research.
