, Columnist
India’s Lofty Equity Valuations Are Pure Bollywood
Nowhere else do cement stocks trade at more than 30 times expected earnings. Yet investors keep buying the narrative.
India’s lofty equity valuations are pure Bollywood.
Photographer: Sanjay Kanojia/AFP/Getty Images
Even to seasoned investment professionals, India’s lofty equity valuations are a head-scratcher. How’s a sell-side researcher to explain to a foreign institution that the country’s cement makers are more than twice as expensive as their peers in every other major market?
Building materials are just one example, though that’s what analyst Sanjeev Prasad and his team at Kotak Institutional Equities picked to raise some provocative questions in a recent investor note, titled What the cement sector tells us about our industry.