Amitabh Singh At The Value Investing Congress

Amitabh Singhi was the first speaker at the Value Investing Congress today, and he discussed India as an emerging market investment idea, and subsequently gave three investment ideas. He started off saying that India has sparse research coverage for the larger companies. 99.6% of companies have no coverage with market caps under $100 million, and it gets progressively smaller as the market cap grows. He says there are 6,000 brokers, and 12,000 sub brokers in the country. He goes on to say that India will add $1 trillion in GDP over the next 5 years, making it a booming investment idea. The GDP is compromised of 63% services, 20% manufacturing and 17% agriculture. The first idea Singhi highlighted was Hero Honda Investments, which has had a 32% CAGR, and has returned 15 times in 10 years. He also went on to talk about Tata Motors

, which is the largest group in the country, and has been producing the Tata Nano. The Nano is a $2,500 car, and Tata has already sold 1 million of these. Singhi also talked about the housing industry in India, as a majority of the population lives in slums. He mentioned HDFC investment co. as a way to invest in this sector, as it's the biggest and best company in the sector. It has a 32% CAGR, and has returned 15 times an initial investment in 10 years. It's trading at 4 times earnings. The second investment Singhi mentioned was Larsen & Toubro, although Singhi doesn't own it, as it trades at 40 times earnings. The last investment he mentioned was Agrimax. Singhi closed the speech by saying that India is an extremely resilient country, and quelled issues of corporate governance concerns in the country.