Head-40% of stocks see upgrade in September

Mumbai: As per an analysis by ET Now, almost half of the stocks which are tracked by at least 10 analysts have seen a 40 percent upgrade in their target prices for the month of September. The data has been compiled in Bloomberg. A total of 313 stocks were taken into consideration for this research.

Only 19 percent of stocks saw a downgrade in the target prices as compared to 28% last month, while there were no changes for the remaining 41 percent of stocks.

A slight upgrade was seen for the industrials and utilities, while a downgrade was seen in the technology segment. No changes in target prices were reported for most of the segments.

Amongst the stocks, with the highest upgrades-Ambuja Cements and Ujjivan Small Finance Bank saw the target price increase between 11-14 percent followed by Karura Vyasa Bank, Punjab National Bank and Indian Hotels which was between 7-10 percent.

Ambuja Cements is undergoing a merger with ACC to be brought under the Adani Group. JM Financial also stated in a report that the benefits of consolidation will be value accretive for the company. Strong Q2FY23 operational updates were delivered by Ujjivan Small Finance Bank and Karur Vyasa Bank where advances and deposits grew in double digits on a year-on-year basis, with an improvement in CASA numbers. Indian Hotels is at record levels as strong commentary comes from management as festive/marriage season and after 2 years the occupancy levels have also been strong.

Amongst the stocks with the highest downgrades, RBL Bank had a target price downgrade of 5 percent. Other downgrades were seen in Greenpanel Industries, MCX, PB Fintech and Bharat Electronics, which saw a target price cut of 3-4 percent.

RBL Bank's growth has been slow despite management assurances on the concern that asset quality remains intact, as the analysts say. Greenpanel Industries might enter an excessive competition in the MDF space as capacity expansion is taking place as per a note by Dalal and Broacha. IIFL cut the target price by 25% to Rs 1500 per share for MCX. MCX’s efforts to extend the existing software support agreement with 63 Moons after 30-Sept-22 did not fructify.