“This quarter and the next would not be a great time for IT companies, but from the March quarter onwards, till the next year when budgets are reallocated, IT companies will do well and perhaps stock markets will typically lead this anticipation by about two or three months. This might be an interesting time to take IT on for the next five to six years as a cycle.”

“I do not know how much more one can expect but yes, if the sectoral move is what you are looking at, clearly UltraTech is one of the bigger beneficiaries. If you are looking at companies which will become big, there is a likelihood of volume growth, commensurate with an increase in prices. My own favourite would be something like Dalmia Bharat.”

“We will have some great numbers for September. Whether it will be in line with Q1 is a bit early to say but looking at the trend of July and August, it may not be so. We are in the last two or three slog overs and we have three weeks to go for this quarter to finish and let us see how Brahmastra performs. Also Avatar is being released again and we have got Vikram Vedha.”

“It is quite clear that only a fortune teller can forecast whether the market will be 5% higher three months from now or not. For us, the game is very clear; if you have money for three to five years, this is as good a time as any to invest in markets, if you have shorter time frames, I think you need to be probably much more wary.”

“We are always trying to maintain the EBITDA margin at 16-17%. We have seen a good drop in the EBITDA margin in the first quarter because of the prices of the raw materials coming down and we had a good stock as well and we could not hike the prices of our final products which were expected to be done by June 15. But now we are hopeful of maintaining this guidance of 16% to 17% EBITDA by the end of this year.”

"Daimler India Commercial Vehicles' (DICV) frame manufacturing and assembly operations facilities in Chennai will be acquired via our own internal accruals and the cost is close to Rs 1,000 million. The new acquisition is going to be EPS accretive right from the beginning. From contract manufacturer, we have become assembly manufacturer for Daimler trucks and that would be very value accretive. "

We have been able to execute pricing action given the input costs of edible oil which came down significantly during July-August and we are seeing much better results. Similarly, foods which had high base are doing well. I would see a gradual improvement in volumes. Q2 will definitely be much better than Q1 and then in Q3 and Q4, it will get normalised.

“The whole world is trying to replace China in both its formulation – API, and its intermediate supply chain. We already have significant investments in firms like GMM, Alkyl, Divi’s. We are considering making some more investments in the space but as we invest in companies with barriers to entry with moats and that require careful work at the down level.”

“At Millennium Mams, after a lot of deliberations and discussion with our mentor, we have combined consumption into one broad bucket. Whatever you spend on, can be termed as consumption like travel, hospitality, FMCG, consumer durables, healthcare and even the financial sector like NBFCs. How can you fail if you go with consumption related stocks?”