Fundamental Analysis of India Dynamics: Defense stocks have been a favorite of investors ever since Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced initiatives to modernize and upgrade India’s defense capabilities, in the process of boosting indigenous supply of equipment. Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), a Mini-Ratna Small-Cap stock is one such gainer company. In this article, we will do a fundamental analysis of Bharat Dynamics, and see if it is a good defense pick.
Fundamental Analysis of India Dynamics
We’ll begin our fundamental analysis of BDL by learning about business. Next, we will read about the Defense Industry scenario and recent developments. Then, we’ll race through the stock’s financials to see how the company has performed over the years. A section on future plans and a summary round out the article.
Company Overview
Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) is a Defense Public Sector Company under the Ministry of Defence, Government of India. It was established over 5 decades ago in 1970 and currently has a market capitalization of Rs 16,500 crore.
This Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) is involved in manufacturing a wide range of defense equipment: Surface to Air Missile (SAM), Air to Air Missile, Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM), Torpedoes and allied defense equipment.
BDL is headquartered in Hyderabad, Telangana and has three production facilities located in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. As of March 2022, a total of 2,674 people were employed in the government company.
Recently, the management has taken three major steps towards expansion of the company:
- Setting up more manufacturing sites in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana etc.
- Sale of certain defense products abroad
- Strategic tie-up with other PSUs and private sector companies
industry Overview
Recent years have proved to be a boon for the country’s defense sector. The Central Government has announced several initiatives to promote the development of this sector. This includes procuring domestically produced defense equipment, putting select products on the list of restricted imports, and higher defense expenditure.
As recently as in February this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the government has made a massive allocation of Rs 5.94 lakh crore for the country’s defense needs for 2023-24. This is 13% more than the previous year’s allocation of Rs 5.25 lakh crore.
This figure includes personnel salaries, modernization of the armed forces, production facilities, maintenance costs, and research and development establishments.
But it is not that India’s defense expenditure is only increasing. The allocation of capital expenditure has increased as a percentage of the total defense budget. Capital expenditure for infrastructure modernization and development is set to increase by 57% from 2019-20 to Rs 1.62 lakh crore in 2023-24.
Thus, we can say that overall the recent developments have put the country’s defense sector in good shape.
Bharat Dynamics – Financials
revenue and net profit growth
In the past six years, Bharat Dynamics Ltd’s operating revenue has declined from Rs 4,887 crore in FY17 to Rs 2,817 crore in FY22. During the same period, net profit has remained largely stable due to improving profit margins.
The table below shows the operating revenue and net profit of Bharat Dynamics for the last five financial years.
financial year | operating revenue | Net Profit |
2022 | 2,817 | 500 |
2021 | 1,914 | 258 |
2020 | 3,095 | 535 |
2019 | 3,069 | 423 |
2018 | 4,588 | 528 |
2017 | 4,887 | 524 |
operating and net profit margin
From the below figures we can see that the operating profit and net profit margin of the company have improved significantly over the years. This has helped the business maintain its bottom line.
The figure given below shows the profit margin of BDL for the last five financial years.
financial year | OPM | npm |
2022 | 21.25 | 17.74 |
2021 | 12.87 | 13.47 |
2020 | 20.24 | 17.29 |
2019 | 17.44 | 13.77 |
2018 | 14.87 | 11.51 |
2017 | 12.3 | 10.72 |
In the next section on fundamental analysis of Bharat Dynamics, we will see how profitable the business is by analyzing the stock’s Return Ratios: ROCE and ROE.
Return Ratio: ROCE and ROE
Return Ratios: Return on capital employed (ROCE) and return on equity (ROE) have fallen sharply over the years as BDL’s equity base has expanded due to past gains but bottom line growth has been nil. Thus, we can conclude that the management is finding it difficult to invest profits to generate higher returns for its shareholders.
The table below highlights the declining yield ratios of Bharat Dynamics.
financial year | ROE | roce |
2022 | 17.6 | 25.2 |
2021 | 9.8 | 13.2 |
2020 | 22.2 | 30.9 |
2019 | 20.2 | 32.3 |
2018 | 25.8 | 37.9 |
Apart from the decreasing return ratio, we can also note that ROE is less than ROCE in all the years. This tells us that management has applied little or no financial leverage to the business, thus reducing the net return for investors because the cost of debt is cheaper for the company than the cost of equity.
We will read about this in the next section by studying the debt of the stock.
Debt / Equity and Interest Coverage
We’ll move quickly through the debt analysis of Bharat Dynamics as it is a debt-free stock with a high-interest coverage ratio. We can see in our table below on debt/equity and interest coverage ratio that the company has been debt free for a number of years.
financial year | debt equity | interest coverage |
2022 | 0.0 | 245 |
2021 | 0.0 | 112 |
2020 | 0.0 | 160 |
2019 | 0.0 | 160 |
2018 | 0.0 | 237 |
Future plans of Bharat Dynamics
Till now we looked at the data of the last financial year for the fundamental analysis of BDL. In this section, we will try to understand what lies ahead for the company and its investors.
- As of March 2023, the company’s order book stood at Rs 13,708 crore, which is almost 5 times its FY2022 revenue, providing strong revenue visibility.
- The management has estimated a CAPEX of Rs 80 crore during the FY23 period, lower than the Rs 103 crore spent in FY22.
- BDL is also exploring export opportunities and has an assortment of products worth Rs 2,688 crore that can be sold overseas. In line with this, it has obtained information from various entities in 21 countries for the supply of its defense equipment.
- As mentioned above, BDL is also in the process of setting up additional production sites and export capabilities.
key metrics
We are almost at the end of our fundamental analysis of India dynamics. Let us have a look at some key metrics of the stock.
cmp | ₹906 | Market Cap (Cr.) | ₹16,500 |
eps | ₹25.3 | stock p/e | 34.1 |
roce | 17.6% | ROE | 25.2% |
promoter holding | 74.9% | book value | ₹171 |
debt to equity | 0.0 | price to book value | 5.32 |
net profit margin | 17.74% | operating profit margin | 21.25% |
in conclusion
Shares of Bharat Dynamics have gained nearly 60% in the past twelve months on hopes of bright prospects for the defense PSU. Even though the company hasn’t grown much in the past, broad sentiment is upbeat about future performance. Thus, investors of BDL should keep a close eye on the quarterly results and progress on the company’s export revenue.
Do you think the current share price of BDL is fair? Will the company be able to generate higher sales and profits in the near future? How can we keep this conversation going in the comments below?
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Vikalp Mishra is a commerce graduate from University of Delhi. He loves writing on finance, money and business. He is a voracious reader and has a genuine interest in investing. Mail him at vikalp.mishra@tradebrains.in.
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