Bearish on infrastructure stocks: Jitendra Sriram

In a chat with ET Now, Jitendra Sriram, VP and Fund Manager - Equities, HSBC talks about infrastructure stocks.

Going forward from here, at least from a budget point of view, would you take any kind of a play in the real estate market or for that matter infrastructure plays?

No, there is a dichotomy here because in terms of the government, the focus is clearly on low-cost housing and I do not think any of the listed players really reflect that to a large degree, so given where the focus of the government is trying to encourage mass housing and so on and so forth and where the listed spaces, clearly that is not the way to play property as a theme. Clearly we could take a look at some of these stocks trade well below their NAVs and so on and so forth because most of these players are actually very metro focussed, high end construction and so on but it is not something that is very appealing at this point of time. Having said that clearly on the infrastructure side, one part has been the fact that we do expect that there will be some closure of the gap between what was targeted and what was achieved in terms of road construction, in terms of power project construction and so on and also is the fact that next year is the last year of the planned period, you should see a lot more execution step-up coming through because government has its own targets to be met and even if I read through of some of the results in the capital goods sector that have come off recently like BHEL came off last week. Clearly in terms of order awards or at least the margin thing seem to be improving a little bit.