Fair value for ITC at Rs 180-190

CNBC-TV18’s Executive Editor, Udayan Mukherjee – I was quite surprised to see ITC goes so effortlessly to Rs 225. If we look at the current price Rs 215 it looks expensive. ITC is a good quality play but the burden of huge taxes going up every year successively.

They will probably do at best Rs 9.5 earnings per share at the end of FY09 or the stock is at Rs 215 so you are talking about 23-times or something like that. 23-times is not cheap for a tobacco company and that is almost a 40% premium to the current Sensex PE multiple if you want to compare with the overall market multiple.
 
So FMCG might be a good defensive sector, but I don’t think either for Hindustan Unilever or for ITC valuations are very supportive for great outperformance in the near-term. I think a fair value for ITC frankly is about Rs 180-190. Rs 225 was a bit of stretch. I don’t know whether the stock will come down in the near-term to Rs 180-190. But beyond Rs 200 you are getting into very expensive ground for that one.