India’s record 11-month stock rally is at risk as profits cool

India’s stocks have powered ahead in recent months as surging earnings outweighed fears about lofty valuations. That dynamic is at risk with companies forecast to report slowing profit growth.

Brokerages predict that companies in the benchmark NSE Nifty 50 Index will either report flat or low single digits profit gains for the quarter ended September.

Earnings may expand at the slowest pace in more than four years, Jefferies Financial Group Inc.’s analysts forecast for their coverage universe excluding oil and gas. 

The benchmark gauge has dropped almost 3 per cent in October, paring the year’s gains to over 15 per cent. That’s fueling speculation it may have topped out in September following a stellar run, before an exodus of global funds toward China. The earnings slowdown is being driven by weakening consumer spending and increasing commodity prices.

“There is a visible loss in macro momentum,” said Rajat Agarwal, an Asia equity strategist at Societe Generale in Bengaluru. “We are clearly seeing a downside risk to consensus estimates, and that can weigh on the market at these valuations.”

Analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. and Macquarie Capital Securities echo that view. Such forecasts augur ill for the high-flying stock market. The MSCI India Index is down 2.6 per cent in October, following a record 11-month winning run.

Macro-economic data are painting a bleak picture. India’s goods-and-services-tax collections grew at the slowest pace in more than three years in September, while passenger-vehicle sales fell nearly 19 per cent from a year earlier. Power demand shrank in August versus a year ago, and both manufacturing and services purchasing managers’ indexes dropped.

The signs were evident from first-quarter results, which brought more misses than beats.

The latest reporting season that kicked off on Oct. 10 is proving disappointing, with net income for Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. — which leads a $250 billion Indian industry that helps corporate clients adopt automation, cloud computing and artificial intelligence — falling short of estimates.

Overseas investors have cut their holdings of Indian equities by more than $7 billion this month, set for the biggest monthly outflow since the record set in March 2020. Those funds are at least partly being redirected to China, where stocks have surged since late-September on the back of fresh stimulus measures.

Bernstein’s quant strategists lowered their rating of Indian stocks to underweight from neutral last week, citing rising vulnerability due to their expensive valuations relative to China and other emerging markets.

“We close our long-momentum trade in India as valuations are now at or near record high with the earnings cycle heading toward a downgrade,” analysts Rupal Agarwal and Cheng Zhang wrote in a research note published Oct. 10.

The MSCI India gauge is trading at a valuation of almost 24 times its 12-month forward earnings, versus a five-year average of about 21. That’s also more than double the multiple for the MSCI China Index.

Biggest Laggards

Among the biggest laggards for the September quarter will be oil marketing companies and the steel, cement, and chemical sectors, Jefferies analysts including Mahesh Nandurkar wrote in a note.

While a slide in earnings growth are a threat, Indian stocks have overcome numerous obstacles in recent years — such as the national election — and managed to keep rising. Local investors may again step in to buy the dip, while the nation’s increasing weighting in key global indexes may drive further inflows.

For now, Macquarie Capital Securities expects to see “more misses than beats” in second-quarter earnings, particularly in sectors such as consumer discretionary, materials and financials.

Profit margins are being pressured in the automobile and material sectors, while the financial sector is just coming out of “Goldilocks credit environment and starting to see some mild cuts,” analysts including Aditya Suresh and Suresh Ganapathy wrote in an October 9 note.