Buy UPL, target price Rs 450: HSBC

HSBC has maintained buy rating on UPL and cut target price to Rs 450 from Rs 680. The stock ended down 1.1 per cent at Rs 320.10 on Wednesday while the BSE Sensex closed 173.25 points down (-0.58 per cent) at 29,893.96.

UPL Ltd., incorporated in 1985, has a market cap of Rs 24457.10 crore.

Investment Rationale


Covid-19 remains a blind spot for now but disruption in FY21 may not be as grave as it appears currently, said HSBC. The brokerage said base case scenarios suggest a comfortable cash flow position and current valuations are attractive even on lo earnings. The stock trades at an attractive FY21 estimated priceto-earnings ratio of 8 times given the shares' 5-year historical mean of 14.5 times, said HSBC.

Financials

UPL's key products/revenue segments include Agrochemicals which contributed Rs 8470.00 crore to sales value (97.80 per cent of total sales); Export Incentives which contributed Rs 80.00 crore to sales value (0.92 per cent of total sales); Royalty Income which contributed Rs 36.00 crore to sales value (0.41 per cent of total sales); Job Work which contributed Rs 28.00 crore to sales value (0.32 per cent of total sales); Other Operating Revenue which contributed Rs 27.00 crore to sales value (0.31 per cent of total sales) and Sale of services which contributed Rs 19.00 crore to sales value (0.21 per cent of total sales) for the year ending March 31, 2019.

For the quarter ended December 31, 2019, the company reported consolidated sales of Rs 8892.00 crore, up 13.75 per cent from last quarter sales of Rs 7817.00 crore and up 80.69 per cent from last year same quarter sales of Rs 4921.00 crore. The company has reported net profit after tax of Rs 838.00 crore in the latest quarter.