See Sensex at 32k by December, bet on NBFCs: Rajen Shah

The upcoming Budget will fire up the economy and results of the government's efforts will be visible, with the Sensex going beyond 50,000 level in next 3 years, said Rajen Shah, Chief Investment Advisor at Tradebulls Group.He expects the Sensex to touch the 32,000-mark by end of December 2017 and says the Budget, which is going to be presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on February 1, will be pro farmer and the economy will see its benefits in the next two and half years. Exuding confidence in the IT Space, he said that there is no reason to worry as the US economy is picking up. He said the valuations of Infosys and TCS look attractive and the downside is limited. Government is encouraging people to go digital and digitisation is a big opportunity for the IT sector, believes Rajen. With the launch of Airtel payments bank and expectation of Reliance doing the same soon, Rajen says the payments bank will disrupt the banking space. He is positive on Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs), especially companies focussed on rural space. He bets on Mahindra and Mahindra Finance.Rajen also says that the demonetisation pain will be forgotten in the next 2-3 months. He is positive on Reliance in the large cap space, as the capex cycle coming to an end and with Jio doing well, and bets on Atlas Cycles in the midcap space.Disclosure: Network 18, which publishes Moneycontrol.com, is part of the Reliance Group.Below is the verbatim transcript of Rajen Shah’s interview to Anuj Singhal, Latha Venkatesh & Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Latha: We got the DCB Bank numbers, the management thought that the worst is over in terms of demonetisation impact how are you looking? I mean we got fairly decent numbers from IndusInd Bank, South Indian Bank, the small banks as category?A: First of all DCB it reported reasonably good numbers but I am not so positive on the banking space, yes it will do reasonably fine. However, this payment bank is going to be very disruptive. Just about couple of days back Airtel launched this payment bank going national with almost 2.5 lakh outlets. Now these are going to be banking points, so this could be something very interesting and now over the next probably 2 to 3 months Reliance also would go on stream, so in fact currently they have about 2.5 lakh outlets and this is likely to be squared up to 4 lakh by June that is what the MD said. I think payment bank could be a very interesting and I think one should look at that segment more than the banking space. Latha: In the finance space there isn’t anything that you are looking at, you prefer non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) to bank?A: Certainly, NBFCs and NBFCs which are more focused on rural India like Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services. That looks very interesting, if you see over the last six years what has happened in Mahindra & Mahindra Finance their number of offices gone up from 600 offices to 1,200 offices currently. So, they are all doubled. The number of employees has gone up from about 9,500 to almost 16,000, so that is up by 60 percent but the profit has gone up just by about – not even 10 percent. So, most of the cost has actually got absorbed in the accounts. Now over the next 5-6 years when the Prime Minister is talking about doubling the farmers income I think rural India is going to do extremely well. I think that companies which are focused on rural India like Mahindra & Mahindra NBFCs I think they will do extremely well. It is looking a little rich at this point of time, but I think should provide you with 20-25 percent upside year-on-year for the next maybe 5-10 years.Anuj: Your thoughts on four wheelers like Maruti Suzuki which have done well or even couple of two-wheeler stocks like Eicher Motors do you get a sense that the demonetisation worries are behind the sector or would be have some more worries going forward?A: It is behind, over the next maybe two to three months it will be forgotten. In fact, when you go to malls, you are moving on the road you don’t see slowdown at all. Very frankly, Maruti Suzuki they have been reporting reasonably fine numbers. The chairman said that they will be maintaining the guidelines what they delivered at the beginning of the year. So, I think they should clock about Rs 240-250 kind of earnings and I think at 23 times it looks fairly priced. However, we need to keep in mind that in China we sell about Rs 2.4 crore cars annually and in India we are selling not even Rs 30 lakh cars. So, the potential upside in the industry is huge. So, there is no point being bearish on Maruti.