CRISIL LTD : A VALUE PICK !!!

Scrip Code: 500092 / CRISIL

CMP:  Rs. 917.45; Buy at current levels.
Short term Target – Rs. 1000; Medium to Long term Target - Rs.1250; STOP LOSS – Rs. 844.00; Market Cap: Rs. 6,437.59 Cr; 52 Week High/Low: Rs. 1,150.30 / Rs. 731.75

Total Shares: 7,01,68,390 shares; Promoters : 3,72,09,480 shares –53.03 %; Total Public holding : 3,29,58,910 shares – 46.97 %; Book Value: Rs. 52.05; Face Value: Rs. 1.00; EPS: Rs. 28.30; Div: 1100 % ; P/E: 32.41 times; Ind P/E: 26.67; EV/EBITDA: 24.04.

Total Debt: ZERO ; Enterprise Value: Rs. 6,205.73 Cr.

CRISIL LTD: The Company was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Mumbai, India. CRISIL Limited operates as a subsidiary of Standard & Poor's LLC. It was formerly known as The Credit Rating Information Services of India Limited and changed its name to CRISIL Limited in December 2003. CRISIL Limited, together with its subsidiaries, provides ratings, research, and risk and policy advisory services primarily in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It offers services for a range of debt instruments, in the areas of credit ratings; research on India's economy, industries, and companies; financial research and analytics outsourcing; fund services; risk management; and infrastructure advisory services. The company provides research and analytics services to commercial and investment banks, insurance companies, corporations, consulting firms, private equity players, and asset management firms. It offers ratings for long-term instruments, such as debentures/bonds and preference shares, fixed deposits, and loans, as well as pass through certificates and structured finance instruments; and short-term instruments comprising commercial papers, certificates of deposits, and short-term debts. The company also provides equity and corporate research, industry reports, customized research assignments, subscription to data services, and initial public offer grading services. In addition, it offers fund research, rankings, and ratings to mutual funds industry; infrastructure advisory services in the renewable energy, transportation and logistics, oil and gas, and minerals sectors; and risk management services to banks, financial institutions, and corporations. The company has a joint venture with the National Stock Exchange of India Limited to provide various indices and index-related services and products to the capital markets. CRISIL is compared with Nice Information Services Co. Ltd, Korea Ratings Corporation and Koryo Credit Information all of these are from South Korea.

Investment Rationale:

CRISIL’s rating businesses like outsourcing from S&P and SME rating have done well during the quarter and helped it to post 7 % growth in the overall rating business. However, with margins in those businesses are at fairly lower level than the bond/bank loan rating business, the growth in revenues in these businesses hasn’t helped the margins with rating business margins declining by 3.30 % YoY. While the debt market activity has been lackluster for quite some time, it slowed down considerably in the last quarter with fresh debt issuances falling to Rs. 48,320 Cr as against Rs. 1.1 trillion in Q4FY12. Rating revenues grew by just 7.2 % YoY (-3.2 % QoQ) to Rs. 90.7 Cr, lowest in more than five years. With no new projects coming up & with given poor investment climate, the debt issuance as well as credit demand are likely to remain low over the next couple of quarters, thereby keeping the ratings revenue under pressure. CRISIL Q2CY12 results were significantly below expectation with operating revenue growing by just 6.5 % YoY (-2.6 % QoQ) to Rs. 220 Cr. The sluggish growth was led by slowdown in all the three segments like Rating, Research and advisory with major disappointment coming from research business which grew by just 10.2 % YoY, lowest since Q3CY09. The other segments rating and advisory also reported dismal numbers with rating growing by just 7.2 % YoY and advisory revenue declining by 21.6 % YoY. The management has attributed the lower growth in research to slowdown in domestic piece which has reported negative growth. Domestic piece which is mainly CRISINFAC broadly constitute 18-20 % of the total research revenues

Outlook and Valuation:

CRISIL House - the 2,11,610 sq.ft
 Corporate Head Office
Powai, Mumbai 

CRISIL has assigned ratings to 31,000 SMEs over last six years which it believes will gradually migrate over next few years as Crisil’s bank loan rating and bond rating customers. Within Crisil’s research business, despite having weak financial conditions globally, IREVNA and Pipal have added significant number of customers over last 6-9 months. Over and above that, merger of CDL will result in further inorganic client additions into the kitty. It is believed that significant addition of clients in research (organically and inorganically through acquisition of coalition) will reflect in research revenues in H1CY13. The pace of growth for CRISIL in research has cooled off from high of 44 % in CY11 to 24 % in Q1CY12 and further to 10 % YoY in Q2CY12. The management has attributed lower growth in research due to the slowdown in domestic price. Moreover with a significant number of new clients addition in Coalition Development Ltd, which was acquired last quarter, will further give traction to the research revenues. CRISIL’s staff costs have gone up by 11% for H1CY12 while other operating expenses have remained flat. While operating expenses remained flat reflecting CRISIL’s ability to keep the costs under check, it is believed that the rise in staff costs reflects further strong additions to employee base. CRISIL has hedged almost 55 % of its revenues as against 40 % in CY10. Of the USD revenues, approximately 70 % of the revenues are hedged against 51 % in the previous year. The hedging of the revenues has capped the revenue as well as EBIDTA expansion despite INR depreciating significantly vis-à-vis USD as well as GBP.  It is expected that Crisil could have earnings cut by 16 % to 17 % for CY12/13E taking into the account the disappointing Q2CY12 numbers. However, CRISIL has gradually put building blocks for strong growth in revenues and profitability in its key businesses. CRISIL could be bought at a target price of Rs. 1000 and should be accumulated at every dip. In my view CRISIL could report FY13E EPS of Rs. 41.30/sh. The stock could be bought for the target price of Rs. 1250 and recommend Accumulate on the stock. 

KEY FINANCIALS	FY10	FY11	FY12	FY13E
SALES (Rs. Crs)	628.40	807.00	1018.30	1,273.30
NET PROFIT (Rs. Crs)	164.50	187.70	226.10	289.00
EPS (Rs.)	23.20	26.80	32.30	41.30
PE (x)	37.10	32.10	26.70	20.90
P/BV (x)	19.60	18.20	13.00	9.60
EV/EBITDA (x)	27.40	22.30	18.30	13.50
ROE (%)	48.60	58.40	57.00	52.90
ROCE (%)	64.70	81.40	82.50	76.60

I would buy CRISIL LTD with a price target of Rs. 1000 for the short term and Rs. 1250 for the 6 month target. As I always say, I am a long term believer in markets & I do respect the markets and will keep a strict stop loss of 8 % or Rs. 844.00 on every purchase.

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