What the ‘sell’ rating on D-Mart says

The rich valuations of Avenue Supermarts Ltd, the owner of D-Mart, are finally beginning to worry analysts. A month after Avenue Supermarts’s blockbuster debut on the bourses, Kotak Institutional Equities has come out with the first sell rating for the grocery retail chain.

At 2.5 times its initial public offering price, the current market price is 46 times expected earnings for fiscal 2019, “expensive in our view,” wrote Kotak Institutional Equities analyst Garima Mishra in a 24 April report initiating coverage on the stock.

The Avenues Supermart stock has climbed 145% since its listing on March 21. On the first day of trading, the stock doubled its value. On Monday, it closed 2.4% lower on the BSE at ₹726 a share.

Despite forecasting strong earnings growth for the firm and lauding its business model, the Kotak report is skeptical about the valuations.

“Given its focus on retail of everyday consumption items such as food and HPC (home & personal care), we believe D-Mart has built a viable business that can scale beyond Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh/Telangana where the bulk of its stores are present,” the report said.

Yet, it has highlighted four key risks—a sharp decline in the pace of same-store sales growth, slower than expected ramp-up of new stores, competition from other retailers and e-commerce companies, and an increase in land prices.

Kotak forecasts Avenues Supermarts to grow its operating profit and net profit at an annual average of 28% and 35% respectively over the next three years.

The supermarket chain, with a focus on value-retailing, opened its first store in Mumbai in 2002, and had expanded to 118 stores as of 31 January.

Radhakishan Damani and his family own 91.34% of Avenue Supermarts.

According to the company’s share-sale prospectus, its revenue grew at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35.28% from fiscal 2014 to ₹8,606 crore in fiscal 2016. For the nine months to December 2016, it reported a total revenue of ₹8,803 crore. Its net profit grew at a CAGR of 40.55% from fiscal 2014 to ₹318.76 crore in 2015-16.