September 24, 2007

Gujarat gas – Recent review

I invested in Gujarat gas back in 2003 and exited my position by 2006. I recently read the following post on ranjit’s blog. As Gujarat gas is one of his top 5 holdings, I decided to re-look at the company to see what I am missing out as I had exited my position sometime back and did not feel that the company is under-valued.

I found the following positives

- Gujarat gas now sources almost 95% of its gas requirements at market prices now and has been able to maintain the operating margins. In 2003, a substantial portion of gas was procured at subsidized rates and hence there was a risk of margin reduction. The company has been able to manage the transition very well.
- There has been a substantial reduction in the transmission income. The company has managed this well by expanding the other lines of revenue
- There is substantial expansion in progress at Vapi and Jaghadia. Vapi will contribute to revenue in 2007
- Gas volumes, no. of retail customers and bulk customers are all increasing at a heatlhy rate. This should provide good growth over the next few years
- The CNG business is now in growth phase and should provide for healthy growth of revenue and profits.

Overall the company is firing on all cylinders. It also has expansion plans in place and is investing heavily. I have updated my company analysis (
valuation template-gujgasaug2007) and uploaded the same. The earlier analysis of the company from 2003-04 is also uploaded in the valueinvestorindia google groups.

Disclaimer: I am not recommending this stock. I do not hold the stock as of now and may or may not have a position in the future.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If an application for a gas license can increase mcap of rrl by 50% why cant guj gas have at least 5-10% rise...Maybe the market thinks that way..just joking

Rohit Chauhan said...

reliance stocks are in their own orbit. seems like everyone is buying them like there is no tomorrow

rohit

Ranjit kumar said...

Hi rohit,

I know that you love reading annual reports of companies. Have you read the RNRL annual report. I dont find them mentioning about RNRL relationship with RFRL where all the action is. Recently when i have raised this question with a friend he had exited the stock at 44/- an i am sure he wants to kick my ass.

Regards,
Ranjit kumar

Rohit Chauhan said...

hi ranjit
i have not read the RNRL AR. typically i run my filters on undervalued stocks and then analyse the AR.
in case of reliance, i guess there action in almost all the group companies. somehow i dont see any rationality in the whole thing. i hold RIL and REL and cannot explain the sudden jump in the prices

regards
rohit