World’s best performing stock market
Tuesday, 4th December, 2007
INDIA: World’s best performing stock market
Thirteen Indian firms have been named in a list of 100 fastest-growing small and mid-size companies in Asia, with some emerging on top in terms of sales and capital returns.
“Asia’s Hot Growth Companies” list, prepared by US-based financial magazine Business Week, says India is home to a higher number of such companies than China, whose presence is limited to just eight firms. Besides, India is next only to Taiwan and Japan, which have been represented by 24 and 18 firms respectively.
There are 13 firms from Hong Kong, seven from Korea, four from Malaysia, nine from Singapore and two from Thailand. The single firm from Pakistan is Packages Limited; a manufacturer of paper products is ranked at the 84th position. Among the Indian firms, Lakshmi Machine Works is ranked 17th, followed by Kirloskar Brothers (18th) and Godrej Consumer Products (23rd). Other Indian companies named in the list are Marico (40), Colgate-Palmolive India (45), Hexaware Technologies (53), GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals (60) Panacea Biotec (68), Bajaj Hindustan (72), Motherson Sumi Systems (79), Cummins India (83), I-flex Solutions (93) and Titan Industries (98).
Hong Kong-based Ajisen Holdings, a "company that is profiting from Chinese demand for Japanese noodles", has been ranked at the top, followed by Raffles Education of Singapore.
In terms of highest sales in 2006, three Indian firms — Cummins India, Titan Industries and I-flex Solutions -are ranked first, second and third, respectively. Cummins — which manufactures diesel, gas, and dual fuel engines for power generation and other industrial purposes — had sales of $498.8 million, while Tata Group’s Titan Industries recorded revenues of $491.2 million. Information technology solutions provider I-flex raked in sales of $484.3 million. In terms of three-year average return on capital, Godrej Consumer was ranked on top across Asia with 106.7%. Godrej Consumer and Marico were named as the second and third biggest companies with a return of 57.7% and 57.2% respectively on the basis of capital return last year. Based on market value, I-Flex was ranked second with a value of about $4 billion.
India has emerged as the world’s best performing stock market in the past three months, notwithstanding the five-day plunge that wiped off close to 85 billion dollars of investors’ wealth from the bourses.
The country’s benchmark Sensex has lost over 1,300 points in five trading sessions pulling down the total market capitalisation of all the listed firms from about $ 1,650 billion to $ 1,565 billion during the same period.
However, an analysis of three-month US dollar return data available with the global market intelligence service provider MSCI Barra for equity markets across the world shows that Indian bourses have delivered the highest gain of 33.64% it during this period, thus adding over $ 400 billion to y the investors’ kitty.
The developed markets like the US, Japan, Austria, Sweden and Belgium have given negative returns in this period, while UK managed a modest return of 0.6%.
The best performing developed markets has been Spain 18% and Hong Kong 17%. But, their returns is just about half of the same on Indian bourses since August 21 Worldwide. India is followed by Qatar, UAE and Egypt with a gain of about 28% each.
