Reliance becoming FAANG of India, it will continue to grow: Mark Matthews

In India apart from Reliance, there are probably less than a dozen companies which are a play on Indian economy. It has even more exclusivity in that sense, says the MD of Julius Baer.

Apple is only $150 billion away from becoming a $2-trillion company. That means Apple is going to be as much as the size of India’s GDP?
I agree it is a big number and there are three other companies in the world that are valued in excess of a trillion dollars and they are called tera-caps. If you extrapolate the returns on these mega caps three, four, five years forward, they led up to being larger than the rest of the market which I suppose is theoretically possible but it would certainly be very strange to have four companies worth more than the entire other 496 stocks in the S&P 500.

You would think that eventually the outperformance would change but at least now there is no reason for that to happen because they are still coming through with extremely good results. They have cash on their balance sheets and they are benefiting from Covid-19.

In fact, many of these companies are emerging market plays because the growth is so strong in emerging markets. When Google surpassed Indonesia in value, way back in 2006, I remember thinking that just does not make any sense because Indonesia is a big country of 250 million people and Google is just a search engine; but boy was I wrong? I am giving you a long-winded answer. I do not have a conclusion but at least for now, we think the FAANGS are going to continue to outperform.

A large number was missed out because the IMF was bearish, economists are not certain, companies themselves were slightly uncertain. It is very annoying, frustrating and a nasty feeling when you see markets go higher and when your money is parked in banks which are not giving any returns?
Yes, I agree once again. You might have gauged from my long-winded and generally inconclusive answer to your first question that I do not really have a good answer for the second question either. It would seem impossible that these FAANGS could continue to outperform at the pace that they have over the last five to 10 years.

I guess you mentioned banks but I would say it is difficult to see a better day for them given that the NPAs worldwide will surely pick up as a result of Covid-19 and interest rates are going to stay low, which is not good for them. They face a lot of disintermediation from competitors offering digital services to big companies like in China. I don't really have a good answer but I do think that the markets basically overtime goes up just because good things happen and the economy grows and we invent good things and so I would basically just say remaining invested has been a good way to make money -- just buy and hold.

It seems like Reliance could very well be the FAANG for India. The Reliance stock is single-handedly doing the trick for Nifty. It is really turning out to be a holding company which is a platform business.
I would just sort of agree with everything you said. I think it is becoming the FAANG of India. Apart from the FAANGs in America, you have literally hundreds of other companies that are also interesting, the so called new economy plays and in India apart from Reliance, there are probably less than a dozen. It has even more exclusivity in that sense and the fact that these major American technology companies like Facebook and Amazon and their private equity companies like Silver Lake and KKR have taken a stake in it is really telling you that it does have value -- may be not in the traditional net asset value discounted cash flow sense but Amazon 10 years ago did not have any value in the traditional sense either and look what its share prices have done over that period of time!

I think that Reliance will grow a lot more and essentially in India, the internet will be growing in high double digits over the next five years and probably in 10 years or so. In other words, there’s between 15% and 20% growth in the internet and its related businesses in India. Reliance is a good proxy because it has a distribution channel through its enormous customer base in telecom and retail. I do think it is going to continue to go up.

Most of the private banks in India and the top rung along with the smaller ones are all going in for large fund raises. The Street is somewhat worried as the contingency fund is being prepared. How are you going to read into this move by banks to raise funds at this point?
It could be opportunistic. It could also be that they are seeing the need to prepare for larger provisions and I did note that the RBI’s financial stability report is looking for an increase in NPAs this year from 8.5% to about 14.7%.

It is clear coronavirus is no longer just a problem in Bombay and Delhi, it is spreading to rural areas and that is going to push down rural consumption. Between the two, being opportunistic in raising capital at a cheap price to lend more or raising capital to prepare for a larger non-performing assets -- I would guess it is more for the latter because it does look like the economy is starting to slow down again as the coronavirus is spreading out beyond the urban areas.

What about precious metals like gold since the dollar is weakening and longer term recovery is being factored in. As an attractive asset class, how much more interest do you see building up in gold?
I think the path is up. This rise in gold is very good for India because one of the greatest stores of value in Indian household is gold. This is a good thing for the country that gold prices are going up and it should continue to because the Americans are going to come up with another big stimulus package, I am quite sure of that. The Europeans had an enormous stimulus.

In countries where they can, governments are borrowing unprecedentedly large amounts of money and two things are happening consequently. The first is that in order to pay off that debt, they are going to have to keep interest rates fairly low and that means their currencies will be less attractive.

Secondly, when you are bogged down with debt, you have to pay it off and so you cannot invest or spend as much in research and development, infrastructure and things like that. Then there is political risk. The port in Beirut blew up last night and the Saudis said they are going to develop nuclear weapons. The Middle East is looking bad as usual and then there is the issue of US- China relationship. The secretary of health in America is on his way to Taiwan., the most important American official to visit Taiwan in 40 years. So, there is a lot of geopolitical risk and that helps. The whole precious metals complex is basically what Alan Greenspan used to call a Goldilocks scenario right now.

We have continued to see polarisation in market and concentration in a select few names; financials, Reliance and so forth. Do you see the market here in India getting a little lopsided or do you start to see that difference diluting?
I do not see it diluting immediately, but I believe over the next five years, it is intuitive that smart entrepreneurs will seize the opportunity to be part of the growth in the internet in India. However, they will be mostly young people and so the Nifty composition will change dramatically over the next five years and include more new economy kind of technology companies.

That is where people should be investing and so it will happen. Which is what gives Reliance its exclusivity. I believe, the number one thing that is interesting in India is the internet. There are ancillary plays on it like in a strange way SBI Cards is a play on the internet because it is about online payments. There are a lot of things that might not strike you immediately as being internet related plays, but they really are. They will continue to grow and it will be a very interesting story in India.

What else are you finding that could be an emerging trend? Are you continuing to look at consumption or are you looking at some of the smaller pockets within pharma from the midcaps or chemicals?
The honest answer is that I do not have that expertise. I apologise and I would defer it to my colleagues who operate onshore in India to answer the question. I do not have the ability to answer that question actually.

On a broader spectrum, are you seeing any kind of risks in financials? We have seen a huge spate of fund raising taking place across the financials.
There is a bifurcation between the public banks and the private banks and I do not really see that changing. SBI had good results earlier this week but to me it looked like a one-off because they took a big gain due to the reduction of their shareholding in the life insurance company.

But to me, the one sector that stands to get hurt the most from the coronavirus -- not just in India but around the world -- is banks. There will be a lot of casualties in the small and medium size enterprises as a result of the coronavirus and it will effect the economy, but governments have taken on so much debt that they will oblige central banks to keep interest rates low.

I don't really like banks because they are a large part of the markets. In India I think they are over 30% of the stock market!