Daily Brief India: Adani Enterprises, Concord Biotech Ltd, Gujarat Ambuja Exports, Vedanta Resources and more

• The Adani Enterprises (ADE IN) FPO saw VERY muted demand (realtime available on NSE+BSE websites) on Day 1 Friday as the share price plummeted through the bottom of the range.
• The Adani Group responded to Hindenburg late Sunday with a 400-page rebuttal, cloaked in nationalistic terms. Hindenburg responded saying the company failed to answer 62 of 88 questions.
• This is not going away. They could lower the FPO price, or just pull the FPO. That won’t materially change the significant over-valuation of many Adani Group listco share prices.

In the next installment of our Webinar Wednesdays, we go live with Smartkarma Insight Provider, Travis Lundy as he gives us a quick rundown about what is the current situation that is happening with Adani Enterprises and where they are headed from this point on.

The webinar will be hosted on Wednesday, 1 February 2023, 17:00 SGT/HKT.

Travis Lundy has 20+ years of experience in Asia doing alternative strategies (i.e. non-delta1 non long-only) in fixed income, equity derivatives, and activist/catalyst/event-driven and long-short equity strategies, with most of that time spent managing money.

• Concord Biotech Ltd (658823Z IN) is looking to raise around US$250m in its upcoming India IPO.
• Concord Biotech (Concord) is an India-based biopharma firm, which develops and manufactures fermentation-based active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).
• As per F&S, it was one of the leading global developers and manufacturers of select fermentation-based APIs across immunosuppressants and oncology in terms of market share, based on FY21 volume.

• Gujarat Ambuja Exports (GAEX IN) is an Agro Processing conglomerate having a diverse product profile across oil seeds, edible oil refining, maize and starch, cotton yarn, wheat processing, etc. 
• Our forensics primarily include the takeaways on MACPPL acquisition, its true rationale, accounting impact on the balance sheet and few disclosure errs.
• Other major takeaway relates to capex story and grey areas relating to the capacity size and timely completion, especially for its marquee plant in Malda.

Vedanta Ltd’s (VEDL) Q3/22-23 results were weaker than expected, with thin profitability at the aluminium segment due to higher energy and commodity costs. However, we note positively the sale of Zinc International to Hindustan Zinc​ (HZL) and the fourth interim dividend (USD 570 mn). The financial risk metrics remain modest. The key risk remains the weak debt maturity profile, with large maturities in FY 2023-24.

Vedanta as a group has demonstrated a strong willingness to repay debt, and the capacity to do so by upstreaming cash as quickly as possible. In addition, we note the group’s creative methods to upstream cash efficiently, such as: [1] the sale of Zinc International to HZL; and [2] the merger between Cairn India and VEDL in 2017, when oil prices were low, with the deal partly funded by preference shares to Cairn India’s minority shareholders. We believe that the huge dividends by VEDL in FY 2022-23 (USD 3.7 bn) are the highest possible and will likely decline subsequently, given the correction in commodity prices. Still, this could offer comfort to lenders as it would support VRL’s refinancing needs (i.e. gap between the maturing debt and cash inflows).